


The Size of Perfection

by phoenike



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1940s, Angst and Humor, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Shy Steve, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 19:48:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4535052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenike/pseuds/phoenike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The serum enhances Steve’s physical attributes to peak condition. All of them. Unfortunately, ‘enhanced’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘optimal’ or ‘something that a fella wishes to show the girl of his dreams on their wedding night.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a bit of cracky banter and grew from there. Not a continuation of my other Stucky story, ‘Ain’t the Kind to Misbehave’. I'm doing my best to give poor Steve a happy ending, this time :-)
> 
> A thank you of at least the size of Steve's gigantic... ahem... to my betas Elenilote, Alessariel and EasternViolet!

“Steve, you gotta be kidding. You really haven’t been with a girl since..?”

When Bucky gestured up and down in Steve’s direction with his glass of scotch, Steve knew it wasn’t to point out his neatly pressed and pinned service uniform.

He leaned back against the bar and inhaled half a pint of ale. How the hell did they get to this topic? He couldn’t even blame alcohol, since it no longer seemed to have any effect on him.

Bucky — whose own uniform was a mess as usual between missions — inched closer. The smoky taproom was packed with G.I.s, loud enough that they couldn’t easily be overheard, but Steve still appreciated the attempt at discretion.

“I mean... all those chorus girls.” Bucky’s expression turned wistful. “Man, I’ve known my share of chorus girls. They _got_ to have tried.”

Perhaps some things just never changed? The sun rising from the East, the Dodgers not making it to the World Series... Bucky’s need to act like Steve’s hairy, pandering fairy godmother.

“Oh, there were some close calls.”

“And, let me guess. For some unfathomable for any sane man reason, you said no?”

Steve crossed his brawny arms and hunkered. “Well. It never seemed like the right time. Or the right girl. Some of them were nice” — _and determined —_ “but it wouldn’t have felt... right. Y’know?”

Bucky drained what remained of his scotch, like the idea of turning down a perfectly good piece of tail required more alcohol in his bloodstream. “No. I don’t know. Seriously, Steve. Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately? Or the way women look at you? How can you still be scared?”

“I wouldn’t say scared...”

“Right. Because the correct word is _terrified_.”

Bucky leaned even closer. After two months, it still sometimes disoriented Steve how he now had to tilt his head down when they talked, instead of the other way around.

“Listen. Just pick a dame who ain’t her first time in a rodeo, alright? Sit back and let her handle it. She’ll show you the ropes soon enough. Trust me.”

“I know, I know.” Boy, did he ever. Like that time with the U.S.O. troupe, when he’d found three different showgirls from his hotel room in as many states... each one in a state of undress that mostly comprised of golden pumps and pillbox hats and, on one occasion, two glittery pompoms. He suspected that a wager had been involved. And that had only been the most blatant attempt to rid him of his inexperience.

“Finding someone to show me the ropes is not the issue,” Steve continued.

“Then what is?”

Steve shrugged his massive, uniformed shoulders, his gaze lingering somewhere in the smoky ceiling. “Nothing...”

“Don’t nothing me, Steve. What’s the matter?”

He wasn’t sure what came over him. One moment, he was a perfectly sane individual who knew when to keep his mouth shut. The next, he just blurted out the words.

“I have... a size problem.”

Bucky misunderstood. Of course he did. His confused gaze traveled Steve’s length and breadth from golden head towering at 6’4” to size thirteen shoes and one broad shoulder to another — all mind-boggling two hundred and forty muscular pounds of it. At times, it was still hard to believe, nine months after Steve had been injected with Erskine’s serum, two since the rescue of the 107th that had earned him his Captain’s bars in reality.

“Size problem?” Bucky drawled. “Steve, buddy. You’re huge. That’s _not_ a problem.”

An excruciating blush was starting under Steve’s collar. “It can be.”

“What do you mean, it can be?”

“Well, uh... in parts a man can’t show in polite company..?”

To say anything more would have meant risking death by mortification. Steve waited for his friend to catch on and tried not to squirm. Squirming had been one thing when he was a hundred pounds wet. Now it could break furniture and topple innocent bystanders.

“Steve. Are you talking about your...”

What the heck had possessed him to confess?

Oh, hell. He knew what. For nine months he’d kept the secret, unable to talk to anyone. Anyone other than the doctors back in the research center, that is — but their purely professional interest and remarks about ‘static hypertrophy factor’ had been less than comforting. Steve _had_ to tell someone. And who could a man tell, if not his lifelong best friend... who was now staring at him in a decidedly non-comforting fashion.

After a moment, Bucky took a cigarette from a pack he’d left on the bar and lit it.

“So... the serum,” he said, meting out words like something that could detonate at touch.

He didn’t have to spell it out. Steve could tell all too well what he was thinking. They’d been two young men sharing a tiny apartment. Before twenty, they’d seen everything _._ And... well, small as Steve had been, he hadn’t been minuscule _all_ over. Unfortunately, as it came to increasing size, the serum had not seen it necessary to discriminate.

He nodded, unable to speak. His full-body blush was now in the height of its bloom. It felt like being lovingly caressed with a flamethrower.

“It made you bigger,” Bucky said. “Everywhere?”

“A lot bigger,” Steve wheezed, almost reminded of the asthma attacks he’d used to have.

Bucky took a long drag from his cigarette and narrowed his eyes.

“And how, exactly, is that a problem?”

Steve blinked in bewilderment.

Bucky took on a long-suffering air, like always when he thought Steve was being a bit boneheaded. “Steve, I know you ain’t got a lotta experience, so I won’t hold it against you that you don’t know. But in this case, bigger is definitely better. Trust me. Once the word gets out, you won’t get a moment’s rest from the dames who wanna try it. In fact, leave it to me. I know just who to talk to.”

“Huh?”

Bucky winked, clearly proud of himself. “Problem solved, buddy. No need to thank me or anything.”

“Bucky —”

Steve tried to come up with a dignified way to explain the entirety of his situation. Then he simply raised his hands and approximated a length between them.

Bucky’s eyes widened.

“Sonofabitch.” He turned to gesture for the bartender to refill his glass.

They shared a moment of silence, eyes on the beer casks and liquor bottles stacked behind the bar. Over in the lounge, going by the sound of it, the rest of the Commandos were approaching a singing mood. Steve gazed at the bottles on the shelves. What he wouldn’t have given to get a little tipsy. A little tipsy, right now, would’ve been glorious.

“So... uh... have you measured it?” Bucky hazarded at last.

Steve cringed. “No, I haven’t measured it! Jeez.”

“Can’t spring a thing like that on a fella and not expect curiosity.”

“No doubt they have the exact numbers somewhere in Alamogordo, down to the fraction of an inch.”

“And you ain’t curious? Not even a little? Know thyself and all that. I think it says so somewhere in the Bible. Next time you’re taking a bath —”

“Know what? Forget I said anything.”

Bucky had the nerve to look offended. “Can’t expect a fella to just forget something like that, either.”

Steve could tell that his friend was about to reach his usual goal of getting drunk. Not many would have noticed, but Steve was all too familiar with the drawl in Bucky’s voice and the way he’d stopped stealing glances over his shoulder. All in all, he appeared less broody than usual since his captivity. Steve couldn’t help hoping a little too much that it had been his doing and not the scotch.

“No.” He sighed. “Sorry. I don’t suppose I can.”

Bucky gave him a furtive downward glance that barely reached his belt before it beat a hasty retreat back up.

“I still don’t see what the problem is. Sure, it could take more patience to... get to the bottom of things... but some girls like bigger fellas. You just have to give it a try. It’ll be fine.” He gave Steve an awkward pat on the shoulder. “You’ll see.”

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I believe you, buddy. But you did mean, uh... parade conditions when you showed..?”

Steve raised a brow. “You really wanna know?”

“No,” Bucky muttered and concentrated on making short work of his cigarette.

Steve couldn’t help a touch of crooked humor. “Used to be afraid girls would step on me by accident. Now I’m afraid they’ll run away screaming when they open the package.”

“Yeah, right.” Bucky snorted. “You’re Captain America, in case you didn’t notice. You could have a ukulele down there, and women would still call themselves lucky.”

Steve smiled sadly at the pint that looked so small in his big hand.

When the level of noise coming from the lounge suddenly increased, they turned in unison. An excited Morita soon appeared in the doorway.

“The band! They’re here!”

Among a happy cacophony of hoots, soldiers started jumping from their seats and flocking out the door. There would be music and dancing — and if Steve knew Bucky at all, he also planned to be there. Later, he’d stagger back to their quarters stinking of tobacco and perfume, his collar smudged in lipstick. The other thing besides a dozen shots of whiskey that could still cheer up James B. Barnes, and it had nothing to do with Steve, either.

Sure enough, Bucky stubbed out his cigarette and pushed away from the bar. “Right. Gotta go. Make the most out of life before we take a dive between the icy thighs of Europe.” He spread his hands. “How do I look, Cap?”

Steve took in the way Bucky’s collar and tie hung open, the missing of half of his insignia, his disheveled hair and the general air of not giving a damn about military discipline. Still handsome of course, but perhaps not in the way required to impress the ladies.

“Terrible. Your commanding officer should be ashamed for running such a sloppy company.”

“Aww. The beauty parlor you go to wasn’t open.”

“May I?”

It provided further proof of Bucky’s inebriation that he allowed himself to be mollycoddled without even a mock objection. Steve closed his buttons, tightened his tie and pinned the badges and ribbons in place on his tunic from where he always kept them stashed away in his pocket. By the time he was done, someone was starting to bang on a piano, and there were only a handful of regulars left in the bar.

When he clapped Bucky on the arms, he almost started at how wiry they felt. _How much weight has he lost?_

“Good as new, Sergeant. Go get ‘em.”

“You coming?”

Steve settled against the bar. “Nah, I got letters to write. And I’m still the proud owner of two left feet. The last I heard, nurses have trouble doing their job with their toes broken.”

“Yeah, good thing you have me watching your six, since we all know you can’t take two steps without tripping on those huge meat paddles.” Bucky started backing away, hands in pockets despite the regulations against it.

Halfway across the floor, he pointed a finger.

“I would totally have measured.”

“I know you would, you schmuck.”

With a grin, Bucky mustered some of his old swagger before he turned and disappeared toward the lounge.

 _Well, at least I made him smile._ The first thing his quirk of anatomy had ever been good for, Steve realized. But what satisfaction he got from the thought was wiped away by the one that followed.

 _Yeah, and_ _probably_ _the_ only _thing_ _it’ll_ _ever_ _be_ _good for_ _._ _Making_ _someone laugh._

“Another one, sir?”

Steve lifted his head from where he’d been groaning in his hands. The barkeep was stealing curious glances at him. When would he finally start to remember that people now tended to pay notice if he acted strange? Steve made an effort to regain the dignity his uniform required. After declining politely on the offer to chug more useless beer, he fetched his coat and headed out through a side door in search of his Harley-Davidson.

o o o

The third time Bucky attempted to sneak up on him — this time when he was trying to scrub away crusted blood with half a gallon of water and a rough rag — Steve at last decided to say something.

“You’re trying to sneak a peek, aren’t you?”

Bucky’s guilty expression left little room for doubt.

Steve sighed and turned to lean back against the trestle table, heavy arms crossed on his broad chest, naked to the waist in spite of the near-freezing temperature that made their breaths fume. His lower body was still fully covered, but all the same, Bucky couldn’t help stealing a glance.

It would’ve been lying to say Steve hated how people now looked at him, after a quarter century of being invisible. But the attention was also deeply disconcerting. More so when it came from Bucky, with a dazed expression on his face, as if he still wasn’t always sure that it was his old chum Steve Rogers standing there, and not some twisted hallucination conjured up by experimental drugs pumped into him in a HYDRA lab.

“Just making sure you’re okay,” Bucky mumbled and shuffled in his boots where he stood wearing a thick winter coat, hands in pockets, collar raised against the cold. The dusty stone room around them was part of the house they’d picked as their mobile HQ — one of the few still standing in the Belgian town which had been bombed to kingdom come first by the _Luftwaffe_ and then by Johann Schmidt’s forces.

“That sonofabitch whacked you a good one. Saw you wobbling on your feet back there —”

Steve, whose scrapes and bruises had long since started to heal, frowned. “Could you do me the favor of not lying?”

Bucky turned left and right. Finally he seemed to get a hold of himself, and looked Steve in the eye, obviously a feat of no small proportion.

“Okay.” He swallowed visibly. “Ever since you told me about, uh... well, I just can’t seem to forget it. You were trying to tell me something — something that had to take a helluva lot courage to tell — and I guess I might have brushed you off, some. So, I thought, what if I — well, maybe I could offer, y’know —” He rubbed at his face. “Christ, this has gotta sound like I’m losing my mind.”

“Do you wanna see it?”

“Huh?” Bucky blinked like an owl.

 _What the heck am I doing?_ Steve tried to ignore the heat rising in his face. “Well, it’s not like you haven’t seen it all before, right? Back home. Just... promise me you’ll try not to laugh.”

Bucky’s eyes remained wide. “I won’t.” He lifted his hand, three fingers raised. “I swear. Scout’s honor.”

“You were never in the Boy Scouts.”

“On my honor as a Howling Commando, then.”

Steve sighed and stood, still not entirely certain what he was about to do, and why.

“Make sure the door’s bolted.”

There was no latch on the door. Instead, Bucky simply propped his weight against it and squared his shoulders. He started to cross his arms, then tucked his paws back in his pockets instead. For someone who had once waited for three hours like a statue to take out a HYDRA _Obergruppenführer_ from a thousand yards, he now seemed remarkably unable to keep his attention on a single target for more than a second.

“Alright. Let’s see it, pal.”

Without giving himself time to reconsider, Steve started to unbutton. First his blue fatigues. Then his long johns (even if the serum guaranteed not getting hypothermia, staying warm by traditional means was a good idea for several reasons). Finally, the custom-made trunks courtesy of Stark Industries. Nothing to be ashamed of, was there? He’d known Bucky all his life. Bucky had helped him piss when he was too sick to take care of himself. And maybe, just maybe, he _was_ mistaken about the size of his problem, and Bucky would roll his eyes and assure him that he had nothing to worry about.

But when he dropped his britches, Bucky’s reaction was exactly as bad as he’d feared.

After what was definitely too much slack-jawed staring, Steve tugged his clothes back in place and buttoned up, red from chest to hairline. To his chagrin, it took Bucky several more seconds to close his mouth and look away from his crotch.

Well, at least he wasn’t laughing. Steve only feared it had nothing to do with lack of silliness.

“So,” he said.

“So. Stevie. Buddy.”

“You see now?”

“Yeah.” Bucky blinked. “In fact. I don’t think I can ever unsee it.”

“Can we now agree that I have a problem?”

“That... ain’t the word I’d use.”

“What word would you use, then?” Horror? Mutant? Sideshow freak?

Bucky just continued to appear shell-shocked.

 _I_ _knew_ _it. I’m disgusting._ There went Steve’s timid dreams about making sweet love to Agent Carter. No way was he ever going to make a girl happy with this... thing. Or even a tough-as-nails operative. It felt as if Erskine’s serum had played a cruel prank on him. For so long, he’d been unable to attract even one girl. And now that girls were finally taking almost too much notice of him, he was afraid of tearing them open.

“Well. Now you’ve seen it.”

“For sure. I. Know what.” Bucky pointed behind his back. “I remembered. I gotta go do something for Dum Dum.”

Steve’s heart sank. “Right.”

“The HYDRA rifle we found on that Kraut. Said I’d check if I can’t make use of it. Might be... useful.”

“You go do that, then, Sergeant.”

“Just so you know,” Bucky said, already turning to go. “You ain’t a monster. You’re just — huge. Ain’t nothing wrong with h-huge. Holy jumpin' Jehoshaphat —”

Steve wished Bucky would stop trying to reassure him. He’d rarely heard anything less reassuring.

“See you when we head out, then?”

“Yeah. And Steve. Put on some clothes, will ya? You’ll catch your death or something.” Bucky promptly walked into a wall before managing to escape.

Alone again, Steve couldn’t remember when he’d last felt so miserable.

o o o

The next day, the questions started.

Deep within occupied territory, Steve was passing water under the broken husk of a charred tree near a muddy, partially snowed-over series of holes in the ground that might once have been a pasture. No sooner than he had his clothes open, Bucky appeared by his side, apparently caught by the same need, even though Steve recalled seeing him disappear behind some bushes not an hour ago.

“So, uh. How come it doesn’t show?” Bucky murmured after looking around to make sure no one was within earshot.

“Um. What?”

“For real. I don’t get it. You’ve got a damn stick grenade hanging between your legs. How come it doesn’t show?”

Steve tried to will his bladder to work faster. He was _not_ going to discuss supportive underwear with Bucky. Not now, not ever. It had been mortifying enough to see Howard Stark’s face when, after three rounds of modifications, he’d confessed that his gear still chafed. _I’ll be damned, Rogers. Didn’t_ _know_ _we’re holstering heavy weaponry._

Then again, seemed like he didn’t need to say anything. Bucky was doing fine talking all by himself.

“Guess they had to consider your dimensions when making the suit, huh? Captain America, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s make sure freedom doesn’t poke anyone’s eye out!” Bucky chortled at his own joke. “But what about that snug number you used to wear on stage? Must’ve worked like magic on the dames in the front seats...” He nudged Steve with his elbow. “No wonder the bond sales soared, huh?”

Steve didn’t entirely finish buckling before he hurried away.

Two days of hard marching later, they were reconnoitering on a forested hill over a HYDRA facility, a foreboding beehive of barbed wire and watch lights that marred a picturesque Ardennes valley. Steve didn’t look up from his prone position, but he could still tell who it was that crawled beside him under the bushes to relieve him of watch.

He handed over the binoculars and briefed Bucky on the movement patterns he’d observed. Bucky listened, nodding and humming in acknowledgement, a twig in his mouth in place of the ubiquitous cigarette. Smoking would have been a bad idea so close to the enemy.

“So,” Bucky muttered when Steve was done, binoculars still on his eyes. “I’ve been wondering. Is it a shower or a grower?”

“A what now?” Steve wasn’t familiar with the terms.

“Well, some fellas are showers, some are growers.” Bucky shrugged, awkwardly due to lying on the ground in thick winter clothing. “Just trying to put matters in perspective.”

Now Steve was starting to get afraid to ask what the heck Bucky was yammering on about. He was fairly certain it wasn’t the energy-ray gun festooned lookout tower they’d been discussing last.

“Guess you’d have to be a shower, huh? Otherwise, all the juice would drain from your head and you’d pass out when you, y’know. Then again, you got that super-soldier thing going for you, maybe your body can produce enough blood to —”

“Good night, Buck,” Steve barked and made what had to be a world speed record of crawling backwards and away.

The following day, late enough in the afternoon for the overcast sky to start growing darker, they were headed back through undulating, wooded countryside. Only when Bucky fell in step beside him, Steve realized that despite having at least twice as much equipment and blueprints from the demolished HYDRA base on his back than anyone else, he’d out-marched them by at least thirty yards. If he paid no attention, he still tended to walk like he’d done when he was little and had to hurry to keep up with everyone.

“So, Steve, I've been thinking —” Bucky huffed.

“Keep it to yourself.”

“But —” Bucky’s face fell. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

Steve kept his eyes fixed on the cart track ahead. “I can guess the topic.”

“Have I been insensitive about your not-really-a-problem problem?”

Steve lengthened his step.

“Hey!” Bucky had to break into half-run to keep up with him. “Okay, okay, that was uncalled for. Come on, Stevie, I wasn’t gonna ask about your, you know. Slow down, will ya?”

For the sake of the others, rather than taking pity on his dope of a friend, Steve fell into a more comfortable route-step.

“Damn.” Bucky shrugged to settle the weight of his backpack and rifles more evenly and fished a pack of Luckies from his pocket. “What’s wrong? We’ve always poked fun at each other. You never used to be so damn touchy.”

“You promised not to laugh. You haven’t kept that promise.”

“I ain’t laughing. Not in a mean way, anyhow. It’s just that... well, don’t you think you could use a little more humor and a little less worrying over your anatomy?”

Steve wanted to continue objecting, but his ability to self-reflect was too well developed.

 _Was_ he being overly sensitive?

Why did the idea of Bucky thinking about his private parts, and perhaps laughing at them, make him so uncomfortable? Back home, making crude jokes about each other had practically been their rule of conduct. The fact that Bucky had given a lot of guys hell for running their mouths at Steve had never meant he didn’t do it himself. Besides, hadn’t Steve hoped Bucky would get over his change of appearance and start treating him the same as before? Taking the piss out of each other was part of the deal.

In no time at all, Steve started to suspect that it was _him_ being unreasonable. He couldn't even imagine what Bucky had gone through at Zola’s hands. Now the guy was trying to act normal in what were far from normal circumstances. Maybe the result wasn’t perfect, but the least Steve could do was appreciate the effort.

“What did you want to talk about?” he asked.

Bucky lit the smoke he had dangling from his mouth. “Well, I’ve been trying to figure out why you told me — no, wait for it. Like I said, I’ve been thinking, and last night it hit me. It’s Peggy. Isn’t it?”

Steve’s brows climbed beneath his helmet. “Agent Carter?”

“The one and only. I’ve seen you making googly eyes at her. You have her picture in your compass, don’t you? So. Is it her? The one you wanna show your big bad boom stick to and not have her run away screaming?”

Steve’s heart, which had never since his transformation skipped a beat, skipped a beat. Why did Bucky, of all people, have to ask him that?

“Why?”

“C’mon, man, didn’t we use to share these things?”

After a last suspicious gander, Steve decided to risk it.

“Well, she’s a special woman. Agent. Brave, smart, accomplished —”

“I didn’t ask about her qualifications, Steve, I asked if you wanna get hitched and start making star-spangled super-soldier babies with her.”

Indeed, it had never been just about the act itself for Steve. He needed more. And the way Sarah Rogers had raised her son, ‘more’ in this particular matter meant getting on his knee and popping the question.

A family, a loving wife. Wasn’t that what all men were supposed to want?

“I could see it happen,” he said. “If she had a mind to it.”

He sensed a long sideways look. “Could see it happen? That’s it? I thought you’re madly in love with her.”

“I like her.” Too late, Steve realized he should’ve tried for more enthusiasm. He shrugged self-consciously. “More than that takes time for me.” _A lot of time. Say, fifteen years_ _or so_ _._

“Huh.”

If only he had been madly in love with Agent Carter. It would’ve made things so much easier. Yet the thought of letting her go didn’t sit that well with him, either.

What if he was in love with the idea of loving someone who might actually reciprocate his feelings?

They walked on in silence, no longer marching in any military sense of the word, just trying to cover a few more miles before exhaustion. Bucky finished his cigarette and lit another. The forest gave way to a field, a lone belfry in the distance breaking the line of the horizon against a slate-gray sky. Halfway through the clearing, it started to snow. The eerie calm of drifting snowflakes made the world seem empty and alien, as if the war had wiped away everything and they were the last people left on earth.

“You still don’t trust people to see past how you look, do you?” Bucky asked.

Sure enough, big or small, people had always been unable to see beyond Steve’s appearance. The difference was that, now, more than his own reputation was at stake if someone succeeded.

“Maybe I don’t want them to,” Steve said.

“Why? You got nothing to be afraid of. It’s just you who thinks there’s something wrong with you.”

“That wouldn’t be very grateful of me. Dr. Erskine was a genius.”

“Right.” Bucky snorted. “I remember the face you used to get when you thought someone was looking down on you. Always got your guard up before anyone could throw a punch. Not all the girls hated you, y’know. You were just so sure they did, you didn’t give them a chance to show otherwise.” He took a long pull from his cigarette. The dusk was getting dense enough for the end of his smoke to glow red. “You still make that face, Steve. All the time. You ain’t through being scared, you just found yourself another reason.”

 _No, you have it all backwards,_ Steve wanted to say. But then he would have to explain, and there was no explanation he could give.

“I don’t get it,” Bucky continued in that strange, soft voice. “You could be the nearest damn thing to perfection God ever put on this crummy earth. And I still have more confidence than you.”

Once again, Steve wasn’t sure what made him say exactly what he shouldn’t.

“What if it isn’t Agent Carter?”

“What d’you mean?”

“What if I was already stuck on someone, back in Brooklyn?”

What the hell was wrong with him? Ever since getting Bucky back from certain death, he’d been acting strange, breaking promises he’d made himself so many years ago that it felt like another life.

The level of Bucky’s dismay surprised him. “What? You were? Why didn’t you tell me, Steve?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.”

“The hell it wouldn’t! I mean — I coulda helped you —”

“Not this one.”

“Why? Was it someone I know?”

“You might say that.” _Shut up_ _, Steve._ _Shut_ _. The hell. Up._

Bucky stared at him. “So, who was it?”

Steve shook his head.

“Oh, man,” Bucky moaned. “It was one of mine, wasn’t it?”

Steve gaped. “No, it wasn’t any of your squeezes! Geez.”

“Married?”

“No!”

“Then why won’t you tell?”

“The same reason I didn’t tell you back then! You can’t leave well enough alone.” Now thankful for the falling dusk that hid his blush, Steve gritted his teeth. “Look, forget what I said. It wasn’t meant to happen. That’s it, that’s all there is to it. We got bigger things to worry about.”

“Like what? Not wearing holes in our shoes before we get across this country?”

“How about keeping an eye out for the enemy?”

As if Bucky could stop looking if he wanted. Ever since his captivity, he’d spent most of his time seeing imaginary threats in every shadow, even in the middle of London.

Steve sensed Bucky’s gaze trying to bore through him. Despite the winter cold, he started to sweat in his uniform.

_Don’t see me._

Then Bucky blew out a breath. “Alright, man. Keep your secret. But... think about it. What would happen if she saw you now? If you went to her and told her? What d’you think she’d do?”

“Punch the living daylights out of me,” Steve choked out.

“Huh? What for?”

“For what I am.”

“Seriously?” Bucky’s voice turned ironic. “Let’s see. Decorated war hero, movie star, voted most handsome... did I forget something? Steve, she’d fall in your arms before you could finish the sentence. You just wouldn’t know what the hell to do with her, after.”

Steve felt dizzy, like a man walking close to a steep ledge for too long.

Why was he doing this to himself? He’d promised. He’d promised to leave his impossible feelings behind. And here he was, tearing old wounds open, as if he couldn’t live without the pain. It had to be all that talk about Agent Carter, and marriage, and family... settling for what he could have, if he couldn’t get what he really wanted.

“It’s not — I can’t —” He fumbled for a way out of the hole he’d dug for himself.

Bucky seemed to take pity on him. “That bad, huh?”

“Yeah,” Steve whispered.

Bucky looked away, his voice a murmur around the remains of his cigarette. “She must’ve been something, to put you in such a state.”

Steve couldn’t bear it any longer. He hadn’t cried in front of others since his mother’s funeral. And now he was a national icon. Bawling like a baby in public while wearing the flag just wouldn’t do, at least for anything less than a wholesale desecration of the American dream.

“Can we talk about something else? Please?”

“Sure, Steve.”

But a new topic didn’t materialize, and they pressed on in what was mostly a blessed silence until sheer weariness forced them to make camp.

Late next day, they made it within the flight envelope for Stark’s helicopters. Four hours from radioing in, they were back in London. After a debrief and a night’s rest, Colonel Phillips pointed them at their next target. The plan — if one could call it that — was for the Commandos to be dropped during an air raid as close to Dresden as they could get, make their way to Czechoslovakia, destroy a HYDRA factory there and, ultimately, take whatever route seemed least lethal back to Allied territory. In winter conditions, the travel alone was considered impossible. “Wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it,” Colonel Phillips said and told Steve to encourage his team to send letters to loved ones and enjoy life on a five-day furlough before leaving. It was likely that some of them wouldn’t be coming back.

But in the end, it was Steve himself who almost never made it back to London.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Steve was having the strangest nightmare.

Apparently, it was not a problem for his subconscious to fly and airdrop a 600 lb motorcycle a thousand miles behind enemy lines, keep it fuelled and drive it through knee-high snow. All well and good, but just as he was about to storm the HYDRA factory in the Ore Mountains on his Harley, Erskine’s serum stopped working. Too small to control the giant beast between his legs (a Freudian metaphor had there ever been one), Steve flailed helplessly as the vehicle roared from under him and he rolled through the doors —

— straight into a full-blown formal evening party.

Dames in long silk gowns and men in tuxedos and dress uniforms turned to look as he picked up his puny self from the floor. Blinking under a sea of chandeliers, he wiped the dust from his shabby civilian duds. Unperturbed by his dramatic entrance, a brass band continued to play a waltz. It might as well have been a funeral dirge banged at by the Old Nick himself.

“Where the hell have you been?” A suit-wearing, perfectly groomed Bucky grabbed Steve by the elbow and dragged him aside. “You promised to dance with Agent Carter! She’s been waiting for you all evening!”

Steve panicked. “Bucky, you know I can’t dance!”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna show you how. You can count to three, right?”

“No, wait —”

But Bucky had already taken his hand and was leading him to the glitterati throng, with Agent Carter there, and Colonel Phillips, and Senator Brandt, and even Mr. Stark in a gaggle of be-sequined showgirls. With a smooth twirl that sent Steve’s head spinning, Bucky tugged him in — up close and personal, with fingers splayed on the small of his back and their hips touching. Steve’s whole body went hot and cold at once.

_Oh, no. Not the way they dance in the night clubs..!_

“Now. Pay attention. Step back with your right foot... no, the other right. C’mon, Steve, work with me.”

They had tried this before, always with the same disastrous results. But now it was even worse, with the way they were touching. Terrified, Steve realized that in his shorts, he was just as massive as before. And when Bucky’s knee brushed the inside of his thigh, he knew that something too terrible to contemplate was about to happen —

“ _Steve_ _._ _Steve_ _!_ _Wake up, you worthless piece of shit_ _!_ _”_

He cracked his eyes open.

The world had turned gray and cold. A splitting pain came and went through his head. It was hard to focus, but he recognized Bucky’s form crouching over him. And obviously it was too much to ask that he’d woken up, because Bucky was still groomed and dressed for the dancehall.

“Jesus!” Bucky’s voice came to him muffled, like through thick blankets. “Steve. Thank God. Stay down. I got you.”

To his horror, Steve realized that the unthinkable had happened. It had happened right in the middle of a crowded dance floor, and since he was small again, his body hadn’t been able to handle it. He’d fainted, just like Bucky had joked might happen. _Oh_ _God_ _, would someone kill me already?_

“Buck, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t try to speak, pal. You hit your head pretty bad.” Bucky twisted to shout over his shoulder. “Where the hell’s the damn medic?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to happen —”

Bucky turned back to him, scowling, his anger in contrast with his dapper appearance.

“The hell you mean, you didn’t mean it? If you didn’t mean it, then why’d you go and do it? Christ, Steve! Could you just... stop being a hero for one fucking second!”

Steve was fighting to stay focused. “Don’t be mad. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“Where the hell did you embarrass me, ya moron?”

“On the dancefloor.”

Bucky’s temper was now diluted with fear. “Steve, what’re you talking about?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out.” Everything was getting very fuzzy. “Bucky, please don’t make me dance with Agent Carter.”

“ _Medic!”_

“I don’t want to dance with Agent Carter,” Steve mumbled. “I want to dance with you.”

Then the world went black.

o o o

Dr. Grimsby stepped back from where Steve sat on a cot in the S.S.R. infirmary in London, stripped down to his dog tags, khaki pants and low quarters.

“Temporary brain damage, caused by intracranial bleeding.” Grimsby set aside his reflex hammer. “Several weeks post incident, that’s the most accurate diagnosis you’re going to get. If Sergeant Barnes’ description of the events is correct, anyone else would have been killed by the impact. Captain Rogers, however, seems to have regained all his faculties.”

“See, Buck?” Steve grinned meekly at the human-shaped storm cloud that paced across the floor. “Told you it was pointless to drag me me all the way down here.”

“God dammit,” the storm cloud muttered. Four hours after their return, it still hadn’t shaved, cleaned its muddy boots or changed out of its dirty field uniform.

Steve’s ears burned at the unminced blasphemy in female company, but no one else seemed to mind. When the doctor gave him leave to dress, he pushed to his feet and tried not to tear his undershirt in his haste to get it back on.

Agent Carter folded her arms, a frown lingering on her face. “Are you sure you’re alright, Captain?”

Steve still couldn’t believe she’d stayed. When Grimsby had pointed out that the neurological examination would require Captain Rogers to remove items of clothing, she’d hesitated for exactly two seconds before informing him that as a nurse, she was capable of handling the sight of undressed men. She’d spent most of the time gazing politely at the walls, but Steve still counted himself fortunate that Grimsby hadn’t considered it necessary to inspect absolutely everything.

He reached for his olive-drab shirt. “Yes, ma’am. Haven’t experienced a single hallucination in over a week.” _I think._ “All I need is a good night’s sleep, and I’ll be ready for the next mission.”

“God dammit,” Bucky groaned. _He_ hadn’t appeared self-conscious in the least about staring holes right through Steve, as if there was something wrong in Steve’s ability to heal without scars that would have betrayed the extent of his injuries.

“Just a moment, Captain.” Grimsby seemed to disapprove, as well. “Head trauma can be unpredictable. I’ve seen men sustain a blow to the cranium and go about their lives for a time, then unexpectedly drop dead. I doubt that’s going to happen in your case, but exercising caution for a time would not be misplaced.”

“Sir —”

“I’ll have a word with Colonel Phillips,” Agent Carter said. “See if we can’t postpone the next assignment by a week or two.”

“An excellent idea, ma’am.”

“I can exercise caution on the field,” Steve said.

Three pairs of eyes turned to him. With his shirt buttoned and its tails tucked under his pants in record time, Steve stood at ease, right hand lightly clasped in his left behind the small of his back, taking refuge in military formality against the disapproval that hung thick in the air.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” Agent Carter said, “but in matters of health, Major Grimsby’s opinion trumps your own.”

“Thank God,” Bucky muttered.

“Ma’am —”

“I’m afraid the subject is not up for discussion, Captain.”

The bulldog breed, indeed. Agent Carter was in no position to give Steve orders, but Grimsby was, and Steve had a bad feeling that Phillips would agree. He was looking at several weeks of downtime, and right now, downtime was about the last thing he needed.

Behind Agent Carter, Bucky was still scowling, like he’d been doing ever since he dragged Steve from the HYDRA base. Their return from Czechoslovakia had taken more than two weeks. First crawling over the Alps on what vehicles they could find, then traveling by boat from Italy — all the while watching Bucky start at every shadow and glare daggers at whatever poor bastard looked at him wrong. A fistfight had ended with three Welsh sailors in the sickbay and Bucky thrown in the brig, with only Captain America’s good word keeping him from being confined there indefinitely.

Steve had hoped that once they reached London, Bucky would finally start to unwind. But if anything, he looked worse, with his bloodshot eyes and skin too pale under days of shabby stubble.

There was a knock on the door. After being given permission, a private opened it and saluted.

“Major Grimsby? Sir, your presence is requested at the command.”

“Very well.”

After admonishing Steve to return at the first sign of migraine, vomiting or one-sided weakness, the doctor took his leave. Not sure what to do, Steve remained where he was, in relaxed parade rest.

“To make sure I understand, Captain,” Agent Carter said. “After setting the HYDRA factory on fire, instead of following the plan agreed on, you climbed your way out on the roof, dropped seventy feet onto a super-heavy _Panzerkampfwagen_ crawling with hostiles, single-handedly dispatched them, tossed a backpack full of explosives down the hatch, chased it with a grenade and jumped, at which point the blast sent you flying and you suffered a skull fracture?”

“Yes, ma’am.” No use trying to wrangle the details in his favor.

“It does sound a little reckless, don’t you think?”

She was hardly the opposite of reckless herself. Heck, if anything, she’d been his greatest enabler — helping him to go AWOL when he’d found out that Bucky’s regiment had been captured, recruiting Stark’s aid to fly him behind enemy lines, letting him assault his first HYDRA base all on his own. Seemed like, by seriously injuring himself, he’d discovered the extent of her faith in his ability to do the impossible.

“We would never have made it with that tank operational, ma’am.”

“I trust your assessment of the situation, but according to the Sergeant, there were safer means of dispatching the thing.”

“All of which carried an unacceptably high risk of team casualties. I saw an opportunity and took it.”

Now Bucky looked like _he_ was in danger of splitting a vein in his head.

Agent Carter tapped a fingernail against her arm. “I admire your courage, Captain, but there’s a difference between the brave and the suicidal. I’m not certain you always appreciate it.”

Not an entirely mistaken observation — but they were at war, and everyone was expected to push their limits. Steve couldn’t hold back merely because he still didn’t know the extent of his. It would have been unpatriotic of him to keep from finding out, and ungrateful toward those who had risked their all to create him.

“We’re all required to sacrifice personal safety, ma’am. Without having been there —”

Suddenly the resentment that had been simmering in Bucky seemed to boil over.

“For crying out loud, Steve! You could’ve died!”

When Steve turned to look, he didn’t like what he saw at all. Bucky hadn’t appeared so harassed since their long walk back from Austria.

“ _I_ was there, Steve. I saw your thick skull get bashed in. You kept seeing things for days! So don’t make it sound like it ain’t no big deal, and don’t talk about goddamn sacrifice! You’re not unbreakable, you’re not immortal and you better start to remember that before you get killed in your next harebrained attempt to finish the war all by yourself!”

Bucky stormed out of the room, leaving behind a slammed door and two stares — one surprised, one guilty.

Agent Carter cleared her throat.

“So. You do possess a voice of reason, Captain. It simply isn’t your own.”

When Steve opened his mouth to defend his NCO, he realized that he couldn’t excuse behavior that would have gotten Bucky court-martialled in the regular army. Trying to lead the Commandos by way of traditional authority would have resulted in a disaster, particularly if the one being led had seen him puke his guts out on a rollercoaster, but explaining that to an outsider was difficult, to say the least.

“I apologize,” he said. “The Sergeant’s conduct was inexcusable.”

“Well, he is your oldest friend, isn’t he? ‘Steve Rogers and James Barnes, inseparable since schoolyard.’ I’ve heard the stories.”

Of course she had. The official ones, at least. “They’re more than stories.”

Her expression softened. “Then you’re very lucky to have him, Captain.”

It was less than appropriate to speak freely, but... it was also difficult not to, with how she looked at him. Even in his innocence about women, he couldn’t mistake it as anything except sympathy.

“I think it’s difficult for him to accept that he doesn’t need to look after me anymore.”

“The way he did back home?”

She’d read his files and known him back when running fifty yards made him wheeze. So, no use denying it. “Yes,” Steve said.

She smiled, as if imagining it. “It must’ve been quite the shock, to see how you’ve changed. Perhaps one shouldn’t be surprised if it takes more than a few short months for him to start thinking of you differently.”

“He’s changed, as well,” Steve said.

 _And how._ He remembered, all too clearly, the moment when he’d helped Bucky from Zola’s operating chair. The harrowed eyes. The bruises. How thin he was. And how, after the drugs had worn off, Bucky had started to smile less, not more.

“Haven’t we all?” She met his eyes. “For what it’s worth, Captain, it never occurred to me that you needed looking after. Physical prowess isn’t everything.”

 _Oh, God._ He’d have to be the greatest boob that ever lived to let her slip away, wouldn’t he?

“Ah, well, Buck... he kind of had to, since I couldn’t stay out of trouble —”

“Shocking,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye.

Hoping he didn’t look as bashful as he felt, Steve smiled back.

The warm feeling in his chest. Was it something he could build a life on? Several lives, if fate would have it?

“I’m just trying to do what needs to be done, ma’am.”

She sighed. “Of course, Captain. But while you’re at it, do keep in mind that you can save more lives by _not_ getting heroically killed in action, hm? And that sometimes we all need a little looking after.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

When he stepped out of the building, Steve spotted his loyal wingman at once, propping up a wall across the street, a garrison cap pulled low over his brows, the dog-end of a cigarette pinched to his mouth.

For a second, Steve considered pretending he hadn’t noticed. Bucky undoubtedly had, since as usual, he’d chosen a spot where he couldn’t have missed a thing if he’d tried. Then Steve got a hold of himself and set out where he needed, his leather jacket open in the mild March weather, sidestepping other pedestrians and a Morris that honked its way through.

“Hey,” he breathed, in lack of anything intelligent.

Bucky’s eyes barely grazed him. Steve tried not to loom like a scarecrow in his eagerness to get things settled. He felt taller than ever, with Bucky standing hunched against the wall, looking shorter than his actual five foot eleven.

“So, what was that scene all about?”

“No need to chew me out,” Bucky muttered. “Shouldn’t gotten all steamed up. Not in front of your doll.”

Steve resisted the urge to point out that Agent Carter was hardly his ‘doll’.

“She’s tough, she can take a bit of male idiocy.”

“Suppose she can, since she gets along with you so famously.”

Was the dolt trying to rile him up? For the hundredth time, Steve reminded himself of how many years Bucky had tolerated his own ornery moods.

“Are you hungry? There’s a place nearby — or at least there was before we left —”

In lieu of an answer, Bucky cursed as his cigarette butt burned his fingers. He flicked it away and pushed his hands in his pockets, face pursed in a scowl.

How to make things right? Steve hadn’t known on that damn boat, and he sure as hell didn’t know now. All he could do was keep asking the same question he’d been asking for weeks — giving up had never been among his virtues, even when what he could do amounted to banging his head against a locked door.

“Come on, Buck. What’s wrong?”

He was certain he’d be deflected or ignored like every time before. But then a counter question came gruffly from Bucky’s mouth.

“How much do you remember?”

“What do you mean?”

“Back when you came to, in the HYDRA base. You were talking. Do you remember what you said?”

Steve’s gut went cold.

He hadn’t really said all those things. Had he?

“I was pretty messed up, Buck. Could’ve said anything.”

Finally Bucky looked at him. Really looked. And all the warmth that still lingered from talking to Agent Carter vanished.

Bucky’s glare was level and unforgiving. Like he was trying to size up a stranger, now that he no longer trusted strangers closer than his fist (unless they were female and fetching, neither of which really fit Steve’s description). Steve knew he’d have to lie, and lying to Bucky had never been easy, even without the serum enhancing his honesty. But he had to try. Father Callahan had said as much, back when Steve had first confessed to the sin of lust at seventeen. _I know it’s difficult for you to withhold the truth, Steven, but do you want to risk losing your friend? Some sins are greater than others. God sets us such trials to test our worth. One day, you will be glad that you resisted your weakness._

By now, Steve wondered if he’d live long enough to see that day. But... a world where Bucky wanted nothing to do with him? He’d accepted years ago that the price of avoiding that was a broken heart.

“So, whatever you said and forgot,” Bucky said slowly. “I should forget it, too. Is that what you’re saying?”

God, if he’d at least been able to look the guy in the eye when he lied.

“Well, it’s kinda unfair to ask me, since I don’t remember, y’know? Is, uh... is that what’s got you so sour on me? Something dumb I said? Gosh, Buck, I’d just hit my head. I was seeing things. Who knows what I was thinking?” Steve fumbled at his side cap. “I’ve heard it can change a fella, being conked in the skull — like a lobotomy — but you heard the doc say I’m fine now, right? So, whatever it was... look, Bucky, can’t we just...?”

Breathless on his own babbling, Steve fell silent at last.

“Forget it?” Bucky finished for him.

“Uhh. Yeah..?”

“Feels like lately there’s a lot you say to me and then ask me to forget.”

“I...”

Bucky’s attention on him felt like being bathed in Vita rays. In other words, getting baked alive in an atomic oven. And this time, instead of becoming bigger and better, he’d just pop out a slice of roasted stupid. No more than he deserved, for lying to his best friend.

_Don’t see me. Please don’t see me._

“Fine.” Bucky looked away. “Whatever. You tell me to forget, I forget. Like you said. You bopped your noodle. A metric shit-ton of malarkey poured out. Big deal.” He pushed away from the wall. “Alright, now that we got that settled. I believe there’s a bottle somewhere with my name on it, and I have to find it before some sadsack butterbar decides to shove my head up my ass so high that I won’t see the light of day before the war’s over.”

He took a step to leave, thumbing in his pocket for another godforsaken cigarette.

“Wait.” Steve reached for Bucky’s shoulder.

Violent enough to spill his pack of smokes, Bucky flinched away.

It felt like a stab in Steve’s gut. All he could do was stare. And the way Bucky stared back... like Steve had just punched him in the face. Or maybe the other way around.

_What if I’m already losing him?_

Then Bucky seemed to shake off his daze.

“See you around, Cap,” he said and hurried off to blend in the afternoon crowd, his smokes forgotten on the pavement at Steve’s feet.

o o o

Saturday next week, Steve stepped into their usual den of vice with little enthusiasm.

Given the opportunity, he would have spent his sick leave in his office, buried in letters and books. But the reality of his ‘downtime’ had turned out to be the complete opposite of the rest Grimsby had intended. Three newsreels, four motivational troop visits, a state dinner and about a dozen photo shoots and interviews later, the small responsibility of showing his face to his team while they were unwinding should probably have cheered Steve right up. Instead, he could barely muster the energy to button up his Eisenhower. As far as he was concerned, the day they were headed out couldn’t come soon enough — this time to train with the 82nd Airborne Division for some yet to be announced major operation, which they all knew to be the big one they’d been waiting for.

As usual, the taproom was filled to capacity with people and tobacco smoke. No sooner than Steve appeared, he was surrounded by G.I.s who insisted on taking his jacket, shaking his hand and offering to buy him drinks. He navigated the friendly landslide of attention, trying not to let on how much it still flustered him, and scanned the crowd for familiar faces, easily on account of being head and shoulders taller than the rest.

Almost at once, he noticed the last person he’d expected to meet.

Other than film sets and a couple official occasions, Steve had seen little of Bucky since their exchange outside the HQ. He’d assumed that the guy was spending his leave drunk in some back-alley booze dive, the way his ominous parting words had suggested. Back home, Bucky had gone on a bender about once a year, and even though Steve worried, he knew from experience that trying to shake him out of it would just make things worse.

So, no one was more surprised than him to see James Buchanan Barnes himself leaning against the bar with a couple of WAAF servicewomen at his elbow — his Class A uniform pressed and in perfect order, saucer cap under his arm, shoes spit-shined, side part slick with every hair in place... in short, looking like something straight out of a recruitment poster.

“Bucky?” Steve uttered out of sheer surprise.

Bucky turned at the sound of his voice, a thousand-watt grin spreading on his face.

“Steve!”

_What the heck?_

Bucky said something to his companions and then weaved over to clap Steve on the shoulder.

“What kept you, man? Did you stop to rescue some old biddy’s cat from a tree?”

To his shock, Steve realized that Bucky was practically stone cold sober. Even more astonishingly, he seemed to be in good spirits, or at least putting on a hell of a show to appear that way.

Steve picked his jaw from the floor.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” he said. “You look swell. Are you going somewhere?”

“Nah. Just decided to clean up for the night. Don’t know how you manage every day. This crap is a royal pain to put in order.”

“Yeah, I can tell that you barely knew what you were doing.” Steve’s eyes cataloged the vision of military panache in front of him helplessly.

His pathetic attempt at humor was rewarded with a grin that it definitely didn’t deserve.

Awareness that he was being manipulated didn’t prevent Steve from feeling like he was gazing into the sun. Bucky in a state of ruin would have been a lot to take in. Bucky preening and smug about himself... it was like peering through a magic looking glass into that last night in New York before the guy boarded _The Queen Mary_ to go to war.

“Should we go find the others?” Steve managed. He could hear Dum Dum’s laughter from the lounge, carrying easily over the noise of other patrons and a piano.

Bucky looked toward the sound. “Listen, I know you just came in, but would you mind joining me for a walk? I could use some fresh air.”

Fresh air? The man who preferred to pollute his lungs with a pack of smokes a day?

“In the blackout?”

“Don’t worry, big guy, I’ll protect you.”

“But I promised —”

“To those idiots? They only want you here so the girls take notice.” Bucky flopped his cap on his head at a jaunty angle. “Let’s go.”

“You should wear your cover straight, Buck,” Steve said meekly as he was led toward the door.

“Never an ounce of class if it killed ya. Now go get your coat so you don’t catch a cold.”

Too stunned to object further, Steve did as he was told. The sounds and lights of the bar disappeared behind as they stepped into the dusty darkness outside.

After donning his own overcoat, Bucky fished a bakelite flashlight from his pocket. Its muted beam fell on the pavement and reflected dimly from taped, black windows around. Steve put on his garrison cap and followed his friend down the alley.

In spite of the blackout and the air raids that had started again after a long lull, the streets were far from deserted. People came and went from bars, theaters and dance halls. Tens of thousands of foreign servicemen — American, Canadian and others — bolstered the rows of the natives as they all tried to forget what couldn’t be forgotten. But nothing could hide that, five years into war, London was dog-tired. Whole blocks had been bombed and burned to rubble in the Blitz, and what remained was covered in soot and grime. Thousands had lost their lives, many times that had lost their homes, and rationing and fear wore down even those who hadn’t lost that much.

Steve had no doubt that Bucky had dragged him outside to talk. But for a while, the only sound that broke the silence was that of footsteps, both their own and those of strangers passing them by in the dark.

“Did something happen?” Steve asked at last. “You seem different.”

“Nah. Just decided to get my head on straight for a bit.”

“For what?”

“For thinking.”

“About what?”

“About something other than myself, for a change.” Steve sensed a sideways glance. “Would you mind walking to the river?”

“We wouldn’t be back in a while.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t much feel like sitting inside. But if you ain’t up to it —”

“Lead the way,” Steve said.

They veered onto a wider road. Rows of buildings here had been reduced to rubble, their skeletons and exposed cellars gaping from the ground. Boarding blocked out all light from the windows that remained. Fuel shortage made cars a rare sight, and the few that went by had their headlights covered with slitted lids that directed their glow downward. Moving about in the blackout was a risky undertaking — which of course didn’t prevent a whole lot of people from doing it every night.

“So,” Bucky said after a while, radiating all kinds of awkward. In the old days, Steve would have guessed that he was about to be asked to find a place to stay so Bucky could bring over a girlfriend for the night.

“I think I owe you an apology,” Bucky continued.

Oh, yeah. The other reason to be awkward.

“For what?”

“For what happened in Belgium. When you showed me. I mean, the way I scrammed. It was a lousy thing to do, and I’m sorry.”

Was Steve going out of his mind, or did Bucky sound _nervous?_ The guy who made such a great sniper because he’d always had more nerve than anyone?

Steve watched the sky, murky with clouds that the waning moon painted silver where they broke. Here and there the shape of a barrage balloon was a blacker shadow against black.

“It’s alright,” he said. “I should’ve realized I was being gross.”

“Gross?” Bucky sounded startled. “Is that what you’ve been thinking?”

Steve hesitated. “Well. Wasn’t it?”

“Christ on a cracker, no! I ran away because I was a goddamn coward, not because you grossed me out!”

“So, you mean you weren’t...”

“Weren’t what?”

“Disgusted,” Steve got out, appalled at the hitch in his voice.

“Oh, hell. Steve. No.”

At a hand on his sleeve, Steve stopped. The beam of the flashlight fell between them, casting out Bucky’s face under his cap in sharp contrasts. He looked dismayed, and not a little angry.

“Listen, Steve. Nothing about you is disgusting. Not a damn thing. You’re perfect. Don’t let me or anyone else tell you otherwise. You got that?”

Again with the ‘perfect’. What did it mean? Steve knew his own mug was now visible, too. Shifty eyes and blush, and all.

“Say it,” Bucky demanded. “Humor me, for Christ’s sake, you giant dope.”

“Okay.”

“Say you believe me.”

“I believe you.”

Bucky nodded. “Damn right.”

Of course Steve didn’t believe it. But to his surprise, saying he did lifted some of the weight he’d been dragging around since Czechoslovakia. Since that day in Belgium, even. Not least because it seemed that Bucky had decided that his ramblings had been just the result of brain damage. Maybe things would now return the way they’d been? Just like Steve had wanted.

Hadn’t he?

They kept walking, past the destruction. The closer they got to an underground station, the more people milled about. A not insignificant portion of them were American servicemen out with their dates. They were popular, among a certain demographic at least, with their pay five times that of a Tommy, and gum and tobacco always in their pockets to woo the local kids and their pretty sisters. Near a station entrance, MPs saluted Steve and Bucky and then asked for their leave papers, same as every other G.I. they saw.

Steve expected to hear a quip or two about the scene — how a lotta fellas were about to get lucky tonight, or the like. But Bucky hardly acknowledged the lusty crowd or the girls who turned to take in the pair of them. His reticence was unsettling. It seemed to confirm Steve’s suspicion that they weren’t on just any other jolly evening stroll.

After they left the lovebird scene behind, it took ten more minutes for them to reach the Embankment.

At the waterfront, under a row of leafless plane trees, Bucky switched off his flashlight. Only the moon’s glow through the clouds painted out the ships and barges that slept moored on the black Thames. A few distant beacons peeked from the silhouette of the dark metropolis. Without a light source of their own, the two of them were invisible to anyone who wasn’t practically walking on them. And Steve’s enhanced senses told him that it wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

A nightclub nearby didn’t let out light, but failed to keep all its sounds inside. The mushy old song that echoed from its direction lent the view a dreamlike air.

“Unreal,” Bucky muttered.

It was. But then, so was everything about the war. Its size and scope, and what it did to people. In Steve’s case, the change had just been more obvious than most.

Out of nowhere, it occurred to Steve that this would’ve been the perfect occasion for Bucky to do something sentimental with a girl. His polished appearance. The schmaltzy jazz. The way he still hadn’t lit a single cigarette. A bit gloomy for a romantic moment, but all the more poignant for it.

But Steve wasn’t a girl. And whatever Bucky was going to say, it had to be something Steve didn’t want to hear, given that it needed to be said in the dark.

“Look. There’s a reason I wanted to come here,” Bucky said.

“Yeah?” Steve said breathlessly.

“I need to ask you something.”

 _Would you do me the_ _honor_ _of..._ to his horror, Steve snickered. He sensed Bucky stiffen beside him.

“What’re you laughin’ at, meatball?”

“Nothing.” Steve controlled his hysteria. “Go on.”

“Why’d you come for me in Austria?”

Steve’s panicked hilarity vanished.

“What kinda dumb question is that?” he choked out. “Course I came.”

Bucky’s tone turned mulish. “Well, you shouldn’t have. It was suicide.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Oh, yeah? All by your lonesome against two hundred men, armed with a pistol and a damn prop shield, and no idea yet what you could do in a fight? If that ain’t suicide, I don’t know what qualifies.” Bucky’s voice grew growlier. “But you came. Hell, I bet you didn’t even think twice about it. Why, Steve? And don’t tell me you didn’t know it was dangerous. You ain’t _that_ dumb.”

Steve was starting to sweat, and it had nothing to do with the temperature. “I didn’t come just for you. I came for all of you.”

“Yeah, and when they told you I had to be dead, you kept looking. Like you planned to die, too, trying. Goddamn stubborn...” The words faded in a mutter.

Steve tugged at the collar that was suddenly strangling him.

“Cat got your tongue, Rogers?”

“I had to come,” Steve whispered. “You’re the only family I’ve got.”

“That’s it?”

“What more do you want?”

There was a pause before Bucky spoke again, his voice soft — like, even when he was hurting Steve, he couldn’t help doing it as gently as he could.

“You just can’t say it, can you?”

“Bucky, please —”

“What if I answer that question for you? What if I say it wasn’t a dame you were talking about in Belgium? The one you said you were sweet on back home?”

Steve stared unseeing over the water.

“Are you gonna tell me to forget this, too?” Bucky continued.

_So, he knows. It’s over._

For a moment when a world came to an end, it was an oddly peaceful one. The tune from the nightclub changed into another sappy love song. The clouds broke, letting the half-moon cast a bridge across the dark water. Bucky seemed to be taking his time to figure out how to end fifteen years of friendship. Steve sure as hell didn’t know. He suspected that climbing to the top of St. Paul’s and jumping wouldn’t do it, not with his powers of regeneration.

 


	3. Chapter 3

“Listen,” Bucky said. “I’m gonna try something and if you don’t like it — just toss me in the river. Or knock me out. I don’t think I care how you do it, if it comes to that.”

Baffled, Steve watched as Bucky shrugged off his overcoat and laid it neatly on the stone wall that faced the water. Maybe he wanted to avoid getting blood on it while beating the crap out of his soon-to-be-former best friend? A remote possibility, all things considered, but for the life of him, Steve couldn’t imagine what else was going to happen.

Whatever he expected, it wasn’t Bucky walking to him and calmly taking his hand. Too stunned to do much, Steve allowed his arms to be arranged this way and that. When Bucky was done, they were standing like a couple making ready to dance, with Steve in the lead with his right hand around Bucky’s waist and Bucky filling in for the dame, his left hand resting on Steve’s shoulder. The distance between them would have been appropriate enough for a school prom.

Obviously, Steve’s brain hadn’t recovered from being rattled. What else could explain the situation?

“So,” Bucky said. “I see you haven’t thrown me in the Thames, yet. Now, if you could ease up on my hand, it ain’t made of steel... there you go, buddy.”

For a baritone, Steve could sure sound pathetic if he put his mind to it.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? Should I have asked for a spot on your dance card first?”

There simply was no sane reply to that. At least, not one that Steve in his confusion was able to come up with.

“Now,” Bucky continued. “Don’t worry about stepping on my toes, they ain’t as fragile as a dame’s. All you gotta do is shuffle your feet to the music. Like I showed you that one time. You think you can do that?”

“What if someone sees us?”

It wasn’t a pointless question. Immoral conduct of this particular kind caused servicemen to be sent home on dishonorable discharge all the time.

Bucky sighed. “Look around, Steve. Even _we_ can’t see us. You really think someone’s gonna sneak up on us without us spotting the light first? Now, are we gonna do this or not?”

It was so surreal that Steve actually tried.

First to the left. Then to the right.

So far so good. Now, to repeat the process a few hundred more times, preferably without throwing up or falling on his face. Barely able to hear the tune that echoed from the nightclub from the beating of his heart, Steve plodded into what was known in Bucky’s terminology as the ‘shamble of shame’ — the way people danced if they couldn’t tell lindy hop from line dancing.

“Breathe, Steve,” Bucky said, in the same steady tone he’d always used when Steve was having an asthma attack.

When he did, Steve realized that some of his nausea had been caused by simple lack of oxygen.

The last time they’d done this, his eyes had been at the level of Bucky’s Adam’s apple. He’d been tiny and cantankerous and flustered out of his mind when Bucky tried to teach him the foxtrot in their cramped Red Hook shoebox — a thankless task that had resulted in little but frustration for them both. And now it was the exact opposite, with Steve watching the top of Bucky’s saucer cap as they tottered to the music.

Or, well, not the _exact_ opposite. The way Bucky’s physical proximity flustered Steve seemed to require something stronger than a super-soldier serum to fix. But somehow he got through the dance without damaging anything except his pride — and as for getting caught, cars did go by now and then, but their dimmed lights failed to reach the footway, and the people who came and went from the nightclub seemed disinterested in a detour along the dark and potentially dangerous riverside.

When the song ended, Steve ground to a halt, not trembling so much as honest to God shaking.

“Well, pal,” Bucky said without letting go of him, a bit amused (and who in their right mind wouldn’t have been, at Steve’s robot moves?) “You ain’t got rhythm to save your life, but my toes are still intact.”

Surreal no longer quite covered how Steve felt.

“Why?”

Bucky shrugged — though Steve had known him far too long to take his casual air at face value. “Said you wanted to dance with me, after you whacked your noggin. Figured I’d make it happen. Sorry the place ain’t much. I don’t think they’d approve in a dancehall, least the kind you might want to see the insides of. There are places near Piccadilly Circus, or so I hear, but... you’d be recognized.”

Was that supposed to explain something..?

Across the street, the band launched into another song. Bucky bumped Steve lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t just stand there. I dolled up for you and all, the least you could do is give me another dance.”

 _What,_ Steve thought, but resumed the slaughter of his dignity with his feet.

It was hard to call it dancing, rather than something two drunkards might have pulled off at 3 a.m. in a smoky joint, but eventually the worst of Steve’s shock started to wear off. He was still far too anxious to really enjoy himself, but it would have been lying to say that he hated holding Bucky in his arms. Gradually, he even started to notice things other than the pounding of his heart. The slight linger in how Bucky followed his lead, probably since he wasn’t used to, well, being a girl. The pressed wool serge of Bucky’s service coat under his hand. The scent of Brylcreem in Bucky’s hair — not that sugary local stuff, but the real thing, tangy and wonderful. It smelled like home.

Over at the river, moonlight glittered on dark water. The clouds seemed to be breaking for the night.

“I thought...” Steve started, then didn’t know how to continue.

“Thought what?”

“Well.” Steve shrugged. “That you’d take a swing at me, I guess. In case you ever found out.”

Bucky heaved a philosophical sigh. “Take a swing at ya? Now why would I do that?”

“You did it to Vinny the Finger.”

With his enhanced eyes adjusting to the dark, Steve could now perceive something of Bucky’s face under the peak of his cap, and thought he saw surprise.

“How the hell do you know about Vinny?” Bucky asked.

Clocking the late Vincenzo Abruzzo in the jaw not long after his eighteenth birthday in ‘35 had gotten Bucky into all sorts of trouble with the neighborhood Italians. Steve only knew what had happened because he’d almost walked in on the scene: Vinny, married with a kid and another on its way, smooth-talking Bucky behind a bar, showering him with foreign endearments and promising him the moon from the sky if he’d ‘accommodate’. Bucky had loosened two of Vinny’s teeth for him. All had gone to hell in a handbasket until six months later, when Vinny got gunned down in some Italian lottery related scuffle across the river.

“I happened to be around,” Steve said.

Bucky got a hold of himself. “Well, you ain’t Vinny the Finger. Thank God. And how long ago was that, anyhow? Ten years? Don’t you think I’ve gotten a bit smarter since?”

Steve thought back to the three Welsh sailors who’d received their share of Bucky’s knuckle wit on the boat from Italy.

“No?”

“Hey, mind your manners, jackass. I’m the lady here and all.”

They continued to dance, much slower than the current song would have required.

“What? No smartass comeback?” Bucky asked, then.

“Ain’t feeling all that smart right now,” Steve mumbled.

“Right.” Bucky shifted in the crook of Steve’s arm. “So. Comparing yourself to Vinny now, huh? I guess that means it really was my nasty temper and mean right hook you were talking about in Belgium, and not some mystery doll. I mean. I’m not just imagining it, am I?”

The way his face was burning, Steve was getting very grateful for the darkness.

“I don’t even need to see you,” Bucky muttered. “I can _feel_ you blushing.”

“Why aren’t you mad at me?”

“I was, for a time. Got even kicked out of a few bars for how mad. Not exactly an easy thing, for a fella to admit he’s been lied to for going on fifteen years —”

“I haven’t lied to you.” Not for fifteen years, at any rate.

“Yeah, and old Ponzi was running an honest business. Remember your sorry as hell attempt to play me for a fool after we got back?”

“Oh.” How could he forget? He’d run every poorly chosen word through his head so many times that by now, they were all etched in there. “You didn’t believe me?”

“Believe you?” Bucky snorted. “Christ. You ain’t much of a liar and never were. Which sort of brings me to my point. I mean, this ain’t something you came up with in Czechoslovakia, is it?”

Steve couldn’t bring himself to either admit or try to deny it. Then again, his silence probably served as an answer in itself.

“I mean, I’ve... noticed things, sometimes,” Bucky continued. “How you looked at me when you thought I couldn’t see. Or went a bit funny when I saw a girl more than once or twice.”

By now, Steve could’ve been tipped over with a feather.

“You knew, back in..?”

“I guess so. Just took me ten godforsaken years to admit it. You ain’t the only stubborn one here, Rogers... or the only stupid one, for that matter.” Bucky’s voice grew lower. “Lately, I’ve just been mad at myself.”

“You’ve always... and you ain’t mad at me?” Steve knew he was parroting himself, but couldn’t help it.

“Now when have I ever been able to stay mad at you for more than a day?”

Steve didn’t cry. Not quite, even though he felt so small in his huge body, like he was seventeen again and for the first time realized that he was in love with his best friend, just like God had not intended.

“But why did you run when I —”

Bucky groaned. “C’mon, man. We can play the twenty questions later. Lemme enjoy one dance in peace, alright?”

No way could anyone enjoy having Steve’s lack of dancing skills inflicted on them, but he obliged, all the same. And for once, God seemed to have turned a blind eye, for the darkened Embankment remained deserted.

Where the moonlight struck Bucky’s face beneath the peak of his cap, Steve could now make out the ghost of detail. The wing of eyelashes. The side of a straight nose. How Bucky chewed on his bottom lip, a sure sign that he was preoccupied. What was he thinking of? Did he realize that as chastely as they now danced, it wasn’t innocent? Not like those times before the war had been? In fact, had one of them been a girl, it would’ve been the most natural thing in the world for them to —

Bucky looked up. Steve felt, more than saw, their eyes meet. His breath hitched in his throat.

“Can I kiss you?” Bucky asked.

Steve stumbled, his right heel landing squarely on Bucky’s left foot.

Bucky yelped. Steve jumped back by about two meters. Only the helpful stone wall erected in between saved him from tumbling straight into the river.

“I take back what I said about stepping on my toes,” Bucky moaned, bending over in pain. “You weigh a fucking ton!”

Steve leaned on one of the elaborate, unlit cast-iron street lamps mounted on the stone wall, lightheaded.

No way had Bucky really said what Steve thought he’d said. And if Steve had learned something during his short fling with insanity, it was that keeping his mouth shut about things that clearly couldn’t be real was usually a smart idea.

“Did I break something?” he managed to ask.

“No, but I bet you left a helluva bruise.”

“Sorry.” Steve brushed a hand over his forehead, trying to control his dizziness. “Should we go back?”

“Huh?” Bucky straightened. _“Now?”_

“Well — I don’t want them to think I broke my promise about coming tonight and —”

He faltered. The way Bucky stared at him worried him a little.

For a while, they just stood there watching what they could see of each other in the dark, Bucky appearing baffled like he was trying to figure out a particularly daft riddle, Steve with his heart in his throat.

Then Bucky shook his head, hands on his hips.

“You goddamn self-sacrificing monkey,” he said with a mirthless sort of hilarity. “You’d do it, wouldn’t you? Go back and pretend nothing happened. Probably pat yourself on the back for doing the right thing. Hell, without that mess in Czechoslovakia — you’d’ve taken it all to your grave, huh? Just like that.”

Just like that? Did Bucky think this was _easy..?_

“Well, I don’t see how I had a lot of choice,” Steve said. “Being as I’m not a woman, and all.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but it didn’t come out sounding very funny, and Bucky appeared less than amused.

“Yeah. Women,” Bucky said. “They’re soft, they’re sweet, they smell real good. Not like you at all, right?”

Steve deflated against the lamp’s pedestal, arms folded. “Come on, Buck. All I’m saying is, since I’m not a woman, it wouldn’t’ve made a lotta sense for me to —”

“Damn right you’re not a woman!” Bucky was struggling to keep his voice down. “And damn right I slugged that sleazebag Vinny in the chops for trying to paw me in an alley! I woulda done the same to any other guy!”

“I know.” Why did Bucky find it necessary to lecture him on things he’d always known?

“The thing is.” Bucky removed his cap and ran a hand through his hair. His voice turned gruff. “The thing is. You ain’t Vinny, or any other guy. So, I’m gonna ask you again. Can I kiss you? Yes or no.”

So, this was it. The proof that Steve’s reality had been permanently muddled. He was most likely lying in an asylum this very moment, strapped to a cot while whitecoats poked and prodded at him, trying to jog him out of La-La Land.

Or what if he had it backwards? What if it was Bucky who had lost his grip and wasn’t thinking right? He’d been tortured. Who knew what it had done to him, what kind of twisted logic had brought him to the conclusion that he needed to do something like this for Steve’s sake? It simply wasn’t possible that he actually _wanted_ —

“In fact. Screw asking.” Bucky straightened in an alarming manner, like always when he’d made up his mind about doing something stupid. “I’ve seen you flip a jeep with your bare hands, I’m sure you can defend your honor if that’s what you really want.”

“But,” Steve stammered, pressing his back to the lamp’s pedestal even as Bucky was already walking over. “Why would you —” and then Bucky stood on his toes and, with a hand on Steve’s shoulder for support, kissed him on the mouth.

The whimper that escaped Steve’s throat had to be the single most embarrassing sound he’d ever made.

He didn’t know if he was hot or cold, or where was up and where was down. For a million years, he’d barely had the courage to _imagine_ kissing Bucky — and now that it happened, he was too damn stunned to make any sense of it —

— before it was already over.

He opened his eyes. Bucky was watching him from an arm’s length.

“Steve?”

It sounded wary — and no wonder, since all through the tentative, chaste press of lips, Steve had simply stood there with his mouth hanging open and his back stapled to the lamp, hugging himself like the great lump that he was.

“Steve. This is what you want, right?”

Even if it was the most selfish thing he’d ever done. Even if Bucky didn’t really want him. Even if every damn reason Bucky could possibly have for kissing him was wrong.

“Yes,” Steve whispered.

Something in Bucky seemed to unwind.

“So, can I do it again? Properly, this time? I lied, I don’t really want to end up in the river. It looks pretty darn cold and wet down there.”

Steve’s throat was the Sahara. He unfolded his arms and held them at his sides and loomed like an ogre in the dark, unable to speak.

Strong fingers, rough from handling guns and knives and even a spool of murderous fishing line, brushed the buzzed hair at his nape. Steve grunted at the sensation, taut like a saw blade. Another hand slid around his waist under the leather jacket. He stared, poised between hope and terror. Little more than the return glint of Bucky’s eyes was visible, yet in his mind Steve could see everything: every feature coming together to form a face that was more familiar to him than his own. And then — _yes, God, yes,_ every single nerve in his body sang as Bucky kissed him again.

Properly, this time.

Steve’s toes curled. His knees went weak. He swayed and his arms went around the man pressing to him. It was like his body no longer belonged to him. Like he was being hijacked by how Bucky felt and sounded and smelled.

With a great effort, he controlled himself.

Bucky obviously had no idea that he was flirting with a storm that had been a decade in the making. In fact, for someone who’d never kissed a guy before, he seemed quite confident. Hand tilting Steve’s head for a better angle, he nursed Steve’s inexperienced mouth with a determined tenderness, even as Steve clutched at the back of his service coat and reeled at the assault on his senses. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It was so different from what he’d timidly imagined. So tactile and human. The rasp of five-o’clock shadow. The tickle of breath. The heat and pressure of Bucky’s mouth.

He tried to hold back. He really tried. And then Bucky’s tongue darted out to touch his lips, and the game was up. He moaned and, hanging on like he’d once done on the Cyclone, threw himself into the kiss with all the finesse of a girl straight out of convent school and the strength of three or four full-grown men.

“Ow-ow. Time-out,” Bucky mumbled against his mouth.

“What,” Steve blurted thickly.

_You’ve done it now, Rogers, you done ruined it, he’s changed his mind, he’s gonna say forget it ya worthless lug —_

“My ribs,” Bucky wheezed. “I need them. To breathe, and stuff.”

“Oh, God.” When Steve eased his hold, he almost heard Bucky’s bones creak back in place.

“Damn. It’s like being cuddled by a tank..!”

“Jesus.” He was a trainwreck. No way was this going to end well. After getting mauled twice _,_ Bucky had to see that as well.

But Bucky just snorted irreverently. “Taking the Lord’s name in vain, now? What would Father Callahan say?”

“A full rosary of Hail Marys and contemplating verses of Leviticus,” Steve blurted, barely aware what the heck he was saying — and what did it matter, since none of this could really be happening?

“Right. So you told that old geezer. Did you _want_ to be punished..?”

“Yes,” Steve breathed, and then Bucky pulled his head down again. Sin became a meaningless abstraction, paper-thin and distant.

This time, Steve amazingly managed not to mangle anyone. However, he was a healthy twenty-five-year-old virgin being kissed within an inch of his life. Controlling what happened in his downstairs would have required a miracle. And given everything, a _lot_ could happen. And, yeah, Bucky had said he wasn’t disgusting — but what did Bucky know? He’d only had that short glimpse more than a month ago, in the shriveling conditions of an icy basement.

As Steve’s panic and arousal mounted in equal measure, he realized that he really needed to push Bucky away. But his hands simply refused to do it. And then Bucky pressed him against the pedestal and slotted a thigh between his, and — no way was anyone gonna be able to hang on to the fantasy of Steve Rogers being a slightly taller than average dame _now_.

True enough, the kissing came to a sudden halt.

Steve’s face was the sun’s surface. He expected Bucky to pull away. Anyone with some sense of self-preservation would have. But to his shock, Bucky just put a hand between them and squeezed him through his clothes. Measuring. And, God — as if it wasn’t already bad enough, Steve felt himself growing even bigger. In alarm, he glanced around, but the footway was as deserted as before.

“Man,” Bucky muttered in comical astonishment. “You could shoot rockets with this cannon!”

As usual, it was far too long since Steve had last helped himself. He simply couldn’t bring himself to do it very often. The first time he’d tried it after his transformation, he’d aborted mission in horror, afraid that there was something physically wrong with him. Then the doctors had wanted a _sample,_ and he’d discovered that he functioned normally. But it still intimidated him to see or touch himself — which meant that besides being mentally set to go off on a hair trigger, he was also physically very much loaded and locked.

Which Bucky now finally seemed to notice, as well.

He appeared to study Steve’s face in the dim moonlight. Steve wondered what he saw. Probably not much — thank God. But he could damn well hear Steve’s ragged breathing and sense the heat emanating from him and feel how his whole oversized body trembled.

“You got like this, Steve?” Bucky murmured. “Just from kissing me?”

“Urgh,” Steve managed.

And then it was even worse, because the way Bucky touched him turned into a stroke.

In about five seconds, Steve realized that he was going to come. He was going to come in his shorts from Bucky pushing against him and kissing him and rubbing him through his clothes, and how the hell did they go from politely asking for his permission for a kiss to _this?_

“Bu-uh. Buck. Bucky. Wait —”

Bucky’s hand stilled. “What?”

Steve struggled through the mush in his head. “If — if you don’t stop — I’m gonna —”

“Already?” Bucky seemed genuinely surprised.

Steve nodded in mortification.

Bucky seemed to consider this bit of knowledge. He pulled his hand away, eliciting a small involuntary whine. Then he spoke again, with a roughness to his voice which Steve had never heard before. It sent a shiver down Steve’s spine and straight into his prick.

“Can I?”

“Wuh-at?”

Bucky looked up and down the empty footway and across the road, where the music still continued in the nightclub.

“Can I do it?”

It took Steve’s garbled brain a few seconds to parse the words.

“Why?”

Bucky sighed. “What is it with you and your whys?”

_If we do this, we’re never gonna be able to go back from it._

But Steve couldn’t bring himself to say it. Disappointingly enough, if his reason had a kill switch, it seemed to be right where Bucky’s hand had just been.

Bucky glanced around again. “Steve. Look. We can talk all you want later, but — not right now. Now, I want to touch you. Can I?”

With those words, Steve’s dick acquired direct access to his mouth.

“Okay,” it said.

“Okay then. Just keep it down, man, I don’t wanna go to jail for this —”

And even as Steve’s two remaining brain cells went _wait, that’s_ _actually_ _a_ _perfectly_ _valid concern,_ Bucky kissed him again, lewd and sweet, and started opening his clothes.

The zipper on his leather jacket. The waistband of his Ike. His belt buckle clicked, and the strap hissed as it was pulled free. Then a swift, incremental release of pressure told him that the buttons on his khakis and trunks were being popped.

Unhesitating, like his own squeamish encounters with the monster there had never been, a hand pushed into Steve’s loosened clothes and over his prick. Moaning helplessly, Steve threw back his head and braced against the pedestal, his garrison cap knocked across one eye. Things were getting sort of scrambled, but was that hot breath on his throat Bucky’s mouth?

At once, it started, exactly like he’d known it would.

“Not on the — not on the uniform—!” he panicked right before toppling over the edge.

The first moment of freefall was a thing of pure beauty. Like Bucky’s profile when he leaned out to smoke over the fire escape. Or the line of his shoulders when he had his sleeves rolled up and his hands tucked in his pockets. Or the smile he only gave to Steve —

And then Steve hit the rocky side of his orgasm, and there was nothing poetic to how he twitched and whined and grunted and squirted what seemed like a gallon of hot jizz in his underwear, his hands clasping at Bucky’s shoulders and his face twisted.

Gradually, the world returned, in a very muddled sort of way.

“Bucky,” Steve got out. He was running so hot that sweat trickled down his spine. “Buck —”

“Damn,” Bucky muttered, still stroking lightly. “Holy crap. I wish I coulda seen it.”

“Ungh.” Steve squirmed against the cast-iron pedestal, causing his cap to fall off and his hair tumble to his brows.

What the hell had just happened?

He’d defiled his uniform. The symbol of his service to his country. With Bucky. Who probably found it all funny.

A squeeze set off a series of aftershocks that shuddered through Steve’s tall frame and almost buckled his knees from under him.

“Shit.” Bucky laughed softly. “It kicks like a mule.”

Steve had just about enough wits left to notice that there was a handkerchief stuffed down his trunks. Thank God. Hopefully, most of the mess had been contained.

“Urgh.” Christ, he sounded like something that belonged in a zoo. “Was this really... the first time you..?”

Bucky chuckled. “Whaddya think? I’m a guy, moron. Ain’t even the first time I’ve taken care of Mr. Sniffles. I’ve touched you before, just not this way.”

Steve licked his lips, trying to think straight. “Right. Right.” ‘Taking care of’ wasn’t nearly the ‘want you madly’ he might have hoped for, but he wasn’t exactly in what one could consider a proper mindset for making judgment calls.

“Ngh. God.” If Bucky didn’t let up, he was going to —

“Steve. Don’t tell me you ain’t gettin’ soft,” Bucky said incredulously.

“Fwu-uhh.” Steve wriggled as he started to really feel it again. “Can go. A few times. Without stopping.” He’d never had the guts to find out how many. He knew it was more than two.

“For real?” Bucky had a positively obscene grin to his voice. The way his hand moved became more determined. “Holy cow.”

“Bastard,” Steve groaned and tumbled right back down the rabbit’s hole, coming a second time almost on top of his first.

And then the air raid siren started wailing.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I suffered from a writer's block for about a year in between the last chapter and publishing this one. There were several reasons, most recently health issues that started to get really bad in May/June 2016. In July, I was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition. It doesn't affect cognitive functions, but it can be painful and debilitating. A few months later I'm still trying to come to terms with what has happened and figure out what my life will be like from now on.]

Twelve hours after the air raid siren had first sounded, Steve walked into the S.S.R. headquarters at Grosvenor Square with Agent Carter at his heels.

“He’s not there? What d’you mean, he’s not there?” Colonel Phillips was growling at a terrified Signal Corps officer when they stepped into the lobby. “You got any idea what’s at stake? Now go back to that damn machine of yours, get that man on the line and tell him that if he’s now a million-dollar puddle in a Kraut crater, I’m going to make him regret the day he stepped out of that damn pod in Brooklyn!”

Agent Carter, perfect as always in her neat uniform, winked to Steve, stood straight with her hands behind her back and cleared her throat.

Phillips spun on her. “And you! You —”

He blinked at Steve’s tall form, regaled with a service uniform and all his decorations. Steve rendered a salute.

“Sir. Captain Rogers reporting for duty.”

Phillips narrowed his eyes at Agent Carter. “One day, Carter. One day...”

They started down a corridor.

“I know what happened, so don’t waste my time,” Phillips grumbled as they made their way deeper into the building. “But just so you two Duncan Sisters know — five more minutes and things would’ve started to get medieval. This department’s close enough to being shut down every two months as it is.”

Behind the Colonel’s back, Steve glanced at Agent Carter. He’d expected a regular debriefing, not a Situation. She shrugged, obviously just as baffled as him.

“‘Informal inspection of the agency’s core assets’ my ass,” Phillips said, as if reading their minds.

“An inspection? From what echelon, sir?” Agent Carter asked.

“From the highest damn echelon there is, God dammit!” Phillips exploded in his usual oddly resigned manner. “Everyone had to clear their schedules at a ten minutes’ notice. They wanted to see Rogers of course, so we decided to have them present for the debrief, but since you two are late, there’s no time for the full song-and-dance. We’ve got twenty minutes left for the hearing, five for —” his voice lowered — “well, meeting the head conductor. And then the two of you need to get yourselves to the embassy and stay on your best behavior. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Phillips stopped behind a meeting room door and gave Steve a grudging once-over. “Nice job on cleaning him up, Carter. Rogers, for God’s sake, try to make a good impression.” He opened the door on the dozen or so men inside.

“Gentlemen. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

As he stepped into the room, Steve took quick tally of the people sitting there and finally understood why Phillips seemed even crankier than an inspection usually called for. Aside from a stenotypist waiting quietly in her corner, only three men present were below the rank of a Major. The amount of shine was almost blinding.

Then Steve’s attention was drawn to a balding, slender middle-aged officer who stood to the side with with four stars on his shoulders and a handful of aides floating about. The man’s intelligent blue eyes seemed to laugh at some inner joke as they met Steve’s and took careful stock of his impeccable figure.

Steve stood at attention.

“Sir,” he said, trying to control sudden lightheadedness.

“At ease, Captain,” General Eisenhower said.

Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips faded away. Steve moved his left foot to shoulder width and placed his hands behind his back, and hoped that the sleepless night behind him wasn’t showing. The men behind the table murmured to each other and rustled the papers in front of them.

There was no roll call, except to confirm Steve’s identity for the records. An S.S.R. Major proceeded to interrogate him while the stenotypist tapped away on her machine. After a string of initial questions to establish the amount of PR gymnastics Steve had performed over the past weeks in service of his country, they proceeded to cover the previous night’s events.

“Where were you when the bombing started, Captain?”

Aware that his every word might have an impact on the future of the agency, Steve schooled himself as well as he knew how. Trying to lie would’ve been out of the question. Best to keep as close to the truth as he could. Fortunately, it did not need to be _that_ close.

“Taking a walk with Sergeant Barnes downtown, sir.”

“For what purpose?”

“Recreational. We were... going dancing.”

His reply was met with good-natured chuckles from around the room. Two young American officers on their way to steal girls from right under Tommies’ noses — no matter what the little brown booklets handed out to G.I’s on arrival said about being polite, the image clearly pleased the part of the brass currently present.

“What happened after the air raid siren was sounded?”

“We set on foot toward the headquarters, sir.”

“But you never reached your destination?”

“No, sir. We happened on a bomb site adjacent to a movie theater. From a 1000 kilo parachute mine I believe. It had detonated on the ground, so the houses were still standing, but incendiaries had set several of them on fire, the theater included. Civilians had sequestered themselves inside to wait for the all clear and got trapped there by falling debris.” Steve hesitated for a second.

“Go on, Captain,” the Major prompted.

“I ordered Sergeant Barnes to proceed to a nearby shelter and entered the building. By then, it had suffered significant structural damage.” Steve remembered the groans of crumbling concrete and bending steel, the lack of air burning his lungs, the showers of sparks scorching his clothes and flesh. Then screams, some of them fading—  “After I reached the auditorium, the building collapsed on top of me and the civilians.”

“How did you survive?”

“Dug my way out, sir.”

An aide leaned toward Gen. Eisenhower, a hand covering his mouth, a habit to prevent lip-reading perhaps. “Saved more than three dozen people in the process, sir,” Steve’s enhanced ears picked up as he murmured.

“And then?”

“An Incident Officer asked for my help. I spent the night aiding with rescue operations.”

Approving nods, now. Steve couldn’t imagine that many people in the room waxed too emotional over a handful — or even a few handfuls — of civilian lives, but acts of altruism generated good publicity. And unlike movies, they came completely free of charge. Aside from the initial hefty price tag of creating the key actor, of course.

“And where is Sergeant Barnes now? Shouldn’t he be present for this debriefing?”

Hands tightening behind his back, Steve attached his gaze to the opposing wall.

“I haven’t seen Sergeant Barnes since I entered the theater, sir.”

After the hearing, General Eisenhower approached him and offered his hand. Steve shook it, dumbfounded. He had six inches and seventy pounds on the Supreme Commander, but somehow the man still managed to command the whole room with his presence. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly pleasant — very different from how he sounded on the wireless, but then, Steve had found that to be true for most people.

“They tell me you’re going to be the first foreigner to receive the George’s Cross. Well done, son.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’ve heard a lot of good things about you. I look forward to seeing you in action one day.”

They exchanged a few more words — about baseball and Steve’s time at Auburndale Art School, mostly. The Commander had clearly been briefed by someone who knew his job. A few minutes later, his aides whisked him off with urgent murmurs about his schedule.

“Not a word,” Phillips said in his usual mock-disinterested drawl on their way out. “He was never here. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Steve didn’t need to be told why. The Allied Supreme Commander was as valuable a target of assassination as they came.

They returned the same way they’d arrived.

After reaching the lobby, Phillips turned toward them. At least this time the look he gave them could be described as weary rather than withering.

“Carter, when you get to the embassy, make sure Mr. Hero here greets everyone by name and doesn’t insult the Russians. I need you both back by 1400 sharp. There’s a press conference.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I meant what I said about the Russians. Soviets. Whatever the hell those damn Stalinists call themselves these days.” Phillips began to address Steve, then turned to Agent Carter instead. “In fact. Carter, if Rogers makes a mess, I’m going to hold _you_ personally responsible.” He gave Steve a sullen look, as if to say _there, that should hold your righteous ass in line._

He was not wrong. No matter what Steve thought about tyranny, oppression and mass murder, he knew how close he’d once come to ending Agent Carter’s career. He would never willingly do the same again.

“Yes, sir.” Agent Carter hesitated for just a second. “May I ask for a favor?”

Phillips darkened before gritting out a reply. “I owe you one, so speak.”

Agent Carter glanced at Steve. “At any news of Sergeant Barnes, could you send a word?”

Phillips looked surprised, as if he hadn’t expected such a humble request. “Well. I suppose a messenger boy across the square is not too much to ask. Was that all?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The best news I’ve had all day.” Phillips turned to go. “Dismissed.”

Smiling in encouragement, Agent Carter took Steve’s arm, and they left the building.

o o o

No word arrived. After the reception, luncheon and following press conference, Agent Carter drove Steve back to the Howling Commandos’ quarters.

Steve’s tired eyes were sore from being flashed at with far too many Speed Graphic cameras. At times, it was almost impossible to keep them open, but whenever he gave in to the temptation to drift off, he saw searchlights crisscrossing the sky and felt the booming of ack-ack guns in his bones and heard the grinding of the German bombers and the Mosquitoes that hunted them. As if to complete the cacophony, his head still rang from the reporters’ asinine questions. _How does it feel to be more famous than Superman?_ (Well, Superman isn’t real, so... I suppose we compete in different leagues?) _Did your uniform really burn completely off last night?_ (No, I’m glad to say not. That would’ve been inconvenient.) _Not for the ladies. Right, folks?_ (Awkward laughter.) God only knew how his words would be twisted this time before they appeared in print.

Steve barely registered it when the lofty stone façades of Mayfair changed into the more pedestrian townhouses of Notting Hill. The rows of colorfully painted two- and three-storeyed buildings were covered in dust and pockmarked with bombed-out hollow spots like most of London.

“May I ask you something?” Agent Carter asked, her eyes on the road and her hands on the wheel.

“Of course,” Steve said, shaken from his daze.

“Did anything... out of the ordinary take place last night?”

Steve stirred on the passenger seat uncomfortably. “You heard the debrief.”

“Yes. Of course. I’m sorry, Captain.”

Steve rubbed at his face. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to —”

She gave him a quick look. “Well. Call it feminine intuition if you will, but I feel like you have something on your mind. Something more than the bombing. I shouldn’t pry, but... if you need someone to talk to —”

God. Was he really that easy to read?

Steve scrabbled for a lie. Any lie. Again he realized that it was better to stay as close to the truth as possible. He’d tell her what had really happened... to an extent.

“Bucky took issue with being ordered to stay back when I went into the fire.”

‘Took issue.’ Sheesh, that had to be the understatement of the year. Steve could still hear Bucky’s furious shouting in his ears. _Shelter? I’m not going to a fucking shelter! I spent two months in a foxhole being shelled from left and right while you were dancing on a stage in a pair of tights, don’t lecture me about staying safe!_ But by then, the building had already been about to collapse, and Steve had had no choice but to go in. He could only hope that Bucky had decided against following him and getting lost in the place, unable to find his way out before —

“It was a fight long time in the coming, I suppose,” Steve continued. “But we didn’t have time to sort it out, and... well. We didn’t part on what you might call good terms.”

“I see.”

Steve looked away. “For all I know, he might be — and the last thing I said to him was —”

In the small hours of morning, when the rescue team had dropped Steve off at the quarters and he’d found Bucky’s bunk still empty, he’d been devastated, but not at all that surprised. The look on Bucky’s face the night before... Steve had seen the same expression at least a hundred times back home, before the same damn fight. _Don’t tell me what to do._

With their roles switched, would Steve have acted any different? The question gave little comfort.

“Sorry,” Steve said, ashamed of being unable to control his emotions.

“He’s your family. One can hardly blame you for feeling distressed.”

Steve suppressed a demented laugh. Distressed? Looking at Bucky’s empty bed, it had been all he could do not to run back out and start looking in a city of eight million people.

When the car pulled to the curb, Steve stared dumbly at the taped windows and sandbagged front of the long uninhabited house that now served as the Howling Commandos’ quarters. Agent Carter shook her head, sighing as she took in the flimsy market stalls that lined the street and the loiterers who eyed their sombre Austin with dubious interest.

“I still can’t believe that they billeted you here. Anyone on Grosvenor Square would give their right hand to be able to tell that Captain America bunks under their roof. Some of those houses still boast hot water, you know.”

“I chose this address,” Steve said. “From a very short list.”

“Really? What for?”

“To get away from the brass. I wouldn’t have minded, but Buck —” Steve looked away again.

At a hesitant hand on his shoulder, he started and turned.

“Steve,” Agent Carter said. Her brown eyes were warm with concern. “I need to go back. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait this out at the HQ? I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone.”

What had she said, before?

_Sometimes we all need a little looking after._

It was she who’d found him in the morning, arriving at 0700 hours to take him to the debrief. He’d been in shambles, hunched over the kitchen table still dressed in his nigh destroyed uniform. She’d literally pulled him together from pieces, telling him to go upstairs and wash off the grime, blood and mortar dust and put on a fresh uniform. Later, she’d stood by him like a rock at the embassy, whispering names for military attachés, business magnates and European diplomats in his ear — handling almost all the talking, so all he had to do was look tall, imposing and American.

Steve hardly remembered any of it. Only the fear of being court-martialled had kept him from escaping. He couldn’t put his men through the indignity. Or his country. And so he’d stayed — easily one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.

Agent Carter’s hand was still resting on the thick curve of his shoulder.

“Steve. I’m sure we’d have heard the news by now.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, thankful that she wasn’t offering him empty platitudes. _I’m sure he’s all right_ wouldn’t really have cut it, not if one had witnessed the sort of havoc a high-explosive bomb could do. People were disintegrated. Torn to rags. Of course it took one hell of bad luck to get caught in one’s way but — it happened.

After a second’s hesitation, Agent Carter lifted her gloved hand to Steve’s cheek. Steve almost swayed, caught in a sudden spell of unreality.

Bucky had kissed him. Done all those things to him. What did it mean?

What was he going to do with _her?_

On a mission, away from her, it was easy to doubt his feelings. But here, with her sitting so close, close enough to feel her warmth, _touching_ — he wanted to hold her, to draw strength and comfort from her. He wanted it so badly that it was almost impossible to hold back.

He blinked, aware that Agent Carter was starting to look confused at his lack of response.

God. What was he going to do?

What a goddamned mess.

“I, uh. I think I should get some rest,” he said. That at least was true. He’d been awake for more than a day and a half, a large part of it spent at back-breaking labor. Frantic with worry or not, he was ready to fall on his face.

“Oh. Yes, of course. How silly of me.” She retrieved her hand and smiled self-consciously.

Steve felt like hitting himself.

What the hell was wrong with him? Here he was, being offered something great with the most wonderful woman he’d ever met — and he couldn’t even get himself to respond, instead of half mourning someone who’d been missing for less than a day.

Made more daring by sheer exhaustion, he put his hand on hers.

“Please, Peggy. Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m. I really like you.” He went bright red. _Could I sound any more like a fifteen-year-old?_

She looked surprised and cautiously pleased. “Oh. I — well. That’s good, I suppose. But it was terribly selfish of me to draw that out of you at a time like this. It’s just that we don’t meet so very often and —” She chuckled. “Oh, dear. I’m afraid I’m not quite as good at this as I should be, after teasing you so much.”

Steve squeezed her hand. “Thank you. I mean it. If you hadn’t been there... I don’t know how I’d’ve — you’re really something, you know that?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She grabbed the wheel, coloring just a little. “Well, go on, then.”

As Steve was walking toward the house, Agent Carter cranked down the window.

“Captain! I almost forgot. Could you phone in when Barnes returns? The HQ wants to have a word with him.”

“Oh.” Steve squinted at her in the bright afternoon sunlight. “Will there be disciplinary action?”

“I’m damn sure not going to tell them, if you won’t. The way I see it, it’s your call.”

“Huh.” It was, wasn’t it? He nodded. “Thanks.”

“Take care, Captain.” She started the car, and Steve went inside.

As soon as he’d stepped through the door, he could hear the Commandos laughing and talking in the living room.

Only now did it occur to him that Bucky might have dragged himself back while he was away. Maybe he was sitting there even now with the others, sharpening his knife, telling tall tales about Steve, as if the truth wasn’t too much already. Heart pounding, Steve hung his coat and went to the door.

On top of worn old Victorian furniture, his team lay and sat strewn every which way, some of them clearly still hungover from last night.

“Captain!” Dum Dum took his pipe from his mouth. “Speak of the devil.”

Steve scanned the room. No Bucky. _Well, shit._

“Say. We’re about to head to the RCC. Jim here has his eye on a girl. Want to come along, help him make an impression? You even look the part. Decked out like a damn Christmas tree.”

“Fuck you, Sarge.” Morita looked like he’d gotten his share and then some about the same topic already.

Dum Dum pursed his mustachioed face into a kiss that looked ridiculous on him. Morita made a rude gesture. The others snickered and wheezed. Steve tried to smile.

“Everything all right, Captain?” Monty asked from next to the piano, quick as usual to sense that something was off.

“Sure.” He couldn’t tell them. Not now. Not yet — he saw their bewildered expressions and sketched another tired half-smile. “Ready to drop, that’s all. Speaking of which. I need to crash for a couple hours. Have fun, fellas.”

Steve turned to go. He’d rarely felt so tired in his life. Not even after staying up for three days in a row on a mission.

“Hey Cap!” Dum Dum called from behind him. “Almost forgot. Barnes came back while you were gone. Looked like hell. I think he's sawing logs upstairs —”

Steve was already moving.

By the time he reached the door to the officers' room, he’d already heard the familiar snoring. At home, that sound had made him want to tear his hair out too many times to count. Again and again, he’d shuffled his way over to Bucky’s bed and rattled it and cussed, and Bucky had grumbled and rolled on his side, making the cheap springs creak with his weight. After, Steve had always felt like crap. Bucky had to be dead tired from working two jobs. It wasn’t like Steve didn’t get almost too much rest already, cooped up at home with his drawings. And then Bucky would start snoring again, louder and louder, and after listening to it for yet another hour, Steve would —

_Thank God._

He kicked off his shoes and struggled out of his tunic and tie. After staggering to his cot, he passed out before his head hit the pillow, not far from where Bucky was sleeping in his own bunk.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alessariel helped me so much with this chapter that I almost feel like she deserves to be added as a co-author.

When Steve next opened his eyes, the house had gone silent. No more than a couple of hours could’ve passed with how bright it still was outside behind the half-drawn blackout curtains.

He sat up on his bunk, the room around him in its usual quietly warlike state with gear and weapons ready for surprise deployment and pinups that showed Bucky and Dum Dum shared an understanding of Rita Hayworth’s physical superiority. On the cot next to his, instead of snoring, Bucky was now twitching and muttering in his sleep.

Steve got up and crossed the small space that separated them.

“Bucky?” he called softly.

Bucky continued to toss and moan, sweating despite how he’d kicked the sheets to his ankles and was only wearing loose white cotton drawers, a sleeveless undershirt and his dog tags.

“N-no,” he slurred as Steve leaned over to listen. “Stop. Sunnova—”

“Wake up, Buck.” Steve raised a hand to Bucky’s shoulder.

In less than a second, he’d been caught in a firm headlock.

There wasn’t a whole lot Steve could physically do to get free, not without hurting the sleep-addled dolt who was trying his best to either break his neck or throttle him. Fortunately, in Steve’s case, both were relatively difficult to accomplish.

“Bucky!” he succeeded in wheezing against the arm around his throat. “Buck, it’s me..!”

“Wha— Jesus fuck!” Waking up at last, Bucky shoved him away, hard enough to make them both tumble off the bunk in opposite directions.

After the ensuing racket was over, the only sound in the room was that of two large men trying to catch their breath on the floor.

“Holy crap,” Bucky gasped.

“Ow,” managed Steve, head jammed against a cabinet between the bunks, long limbs twisted awkwardly in the cramped space. Was he imagining it, or had Bucky grown stronger and faster lately? A lot stronger and faster. It wasn’t usually easy for anyone to get the drop on Steve like that, to say the least.

A disheveled dark head and a pair of bare shoulders appeared above him from across the bunk.

“You okay?” Bucky asked, still pale and startled.

“Yeah,” Steve replied, without actually knowing for sure that it was true.

“Jesus, Steve.” Bucky hopped from the bed to help him up. “I’m sorry.”

Bucky had had nightmares before. In fact, he had them often. Having read the interrogation records from his time with counterintelligence after Austria, Steve didn’t need to ask why. Frankly, knowing what those impersonal files described alone was enough to give _him_ nightmares — more so since he had a feeling that there was a lot Bucky had left out of them.

“I’m fine,” he said when Bucky continued to look shaken. “Really.”

“No thanks to me. If I’d had a knife on me, like on the field —” Bucky sat down on his bunk like his legs couldn’t support him. Slightly ill in the face, he crouched to grab his deck of Luckies and a Zippo from the floor.

Steve sat down as well. The frame of his cot creaked under his weight.

“Hey, I’m alright,” he said. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

Bucky gave him a cross look. “Stop treating me like I’m an invalid, damn you! You gotta protect yourself, even from me. You can’t just —”

“Geez..!” Steve grimaced and wiped a hand over his face. “I was up all night waiting to hear about you! I didn’t know what happened to you until I got back two hours ago! So don’t start telling me that the first thing I need to do is punish you for something that ain’t your fault. ‘Cause I won’t.” _And damn you, too, by the way._

“That’s —” Bucky bit off the rest of what he’d meant to say. After a last grumble, he lit his cigarette.

“Well, I was afraid something happened to you, too,” he muttered around it, grumpy and defensive, messy hair hanging almost to his brows. “When that place came down. Took me ‘bout an hour to hear from the firemen that you’d punched your way out through the back.”

“I wanted to come looking, but they asked me to —”

“I know. Don’t worry about it, pal.”

“So, where were you?” _While I sat here wringing at my apron._

Bucky shrugged. “Around,” he said, and then just sat smoking with his elbows on his knees.

Steve didn’t feel level-headed enough to insist on a more satisfying explanation.

During the night, he’d imagined a lot of ways this encounter might go, each more unlikely than the other. Bucky trying to strangle him and then chewing his head off for not giving him hell about it hadn’t been included in any of them. _What am I supposed to do?_ Steve hated that he didn’t know. He hated not having any idea how Bucky expected him to behave. And so he waited, memories boiling right under the surface — about their fight at the movie theater, about what had happened before.

Halfway through his cigarette, Bucky was starting to have more color to his face. Steve, on the other hand, wasn’t doing so well.

“Where’s everyone?” Bucky asked, tilting his head as if to listen to the lack of noise from the rest of the house.

The reminder that they were alone did nothing to calm Steve’s nerves. “Said they were going to the RCC. Morita’s got a girl there.”

“Morita?” Bucky looked baffled, if only for a second. “Right. I think they were planning to pull one over on you, Cap.”

“How?”

“Well, one of the cooks over at the club owns the biggest and ugliest bulldog I’ve ever seen. It’s got a thing for Jim. The guys won’t stop giving him shit about it. About how it’s prettier than any of his girlfriends, and sweeter, too.”

“Huh.” The mental image was amusing, but... _Why are we talking about Morita’s canine admirer?_

Bucky took a long last drag and blew smoke over his shoulder, an old habit from the time when Steve had asthma, before leaning to stub out his cigarette in an ashtray on the floor.

“Listen,” he said. “We gotta talk. But there’s something I need to do first.”

Just like that, Steve’s heart was beating faster.

“Oh, yeah?” _Is he going to kiss me again? Oh God, he is, isn’t he? What should I do? Should I let him, or —_

Bucky gave him a lopsided smile. “I’ve got a mighty need, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh.” Steve deflated. “Polishing your Nancy Drew Club badge?”

Bucky was already getting up. “Still jealous about my literary merits? Hey, don’t go anywhere.” He backed away, feet bare against the dusty, cold floor of the Victorian house. “I won’t take long.”

As soon as Bucky was gone through the door, his steps receding in the direction of the bathroom, Steve indulged in a groan and some hair-wringing.

‘We gotta talk.’ Yeah, sure. Talk about what? _Hey, I know you jerked me off in the blackout and all, but how ’bout we go on like nothing happened, since it’s the only alternative that isn’t totally cock-eyed certifiable?_ That wasn’t gonna go over well.

But what else could he do? Let it happen again? Where would _that_ lead? Bucky didn’t really want him. He was just being... well, Bucky. Always going a bit too far. Always looking out for Steve, too, even if that meant doing something a little bit batty. He’d offer to do it again, and Steve wouldn’t be able to say no, and — there would be consequences. Bad ones. Because even if Bucky thought nothing of it and could keep it level, Steve himself would slowly, inevitably end up losing his mind.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. He was going to ruin _everything._

_I can’t do this. I can’t —_

He was just about to reach the stairs when the door to the bathroom opened.

Bucky looked marginally less unkempt, now, with his hair combed and his face rinsed, if still unshaven and only wearing his skivvies. He stopped in his tracks, struck by the sight of Captain America in mid-flight.

“Where’re you going, sport?”

The truth was, Steve had no idea. _What the hell am I doing?_ He wasn’t usually one to run away like this.

Except... yeah. Except when his feelings for Bucky were concerned. When it came to that one thing, he’d been running away his whole life. Seemed like stopping now had been too much to ask.

He clasped the stair rail and did his usual terrible best at looking innocent.

Bucky crossed his arms on his chest. “Making a run for it, eh? Thought you’d want to talk. Kept trying to, at the —”

 _Yeah, well, that was before you kissed me and put your hand in my shorts and turned me into this nutcase._ “It’s okay,” Steve said, his voice a bit hoarse. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Talk about what?”

“Nothing.” Steve grasped for the first possible explanation that wouldn’t make him sound completely out of his mind. “Bucky, a lot of people could get hurt if I don’t do my job. And I won’t be able to do it if someone finds out that I’m not what they think I am. I can’t risk that. Not just because you think you need to —”

“Wait, wait.” Bucky raised a hand. “Slow down. What’re you talking about?”

“You know what,” Steve said. “And you also know why I can’t let you ever do it again. There’s too much at stake.”

“Still going a bit too fast for a mere mortal who just woke up.” Bucky’s brow furrowed. “You mean you’re afraid that someone finds out what we did?”

Steve nodded. No reason to tell that it wasn’t nearly the only thing he feared.

“And you think you get to decide by yourself what we do about it?”

“Well.” Steve shrugged unhappily. “I’m higher in the chain of command, right?”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bucky growled and came at him.

Before Steve had a chance to react with anything but surprised compliance, they were back in the bedroom, with the door slammed shut and him pushed against it.

Bucky counted to ten in his head, or whatever it was that required him to stand in silence for a moment with his eyes shut. Then he fixed Steve with a hard look. It was probably meant to intimidate — for all his good-natured charm, Bucky had always been surprisingly good at intimidation — but all it did now was give Steve an awkward stiffy. _God, I’m such a pervert._ Somehow, the tightening in his trunks or the rush of heat through him didn’t seem appropriate responses to being manhandled by his NCO.

“You’re a moron, you know that?” Bucky let off at him.

“Hey..!” Steve felt his temper climb a notch. “Don’t make it out like it isn’t true. You _know_ what would happen if someone found out. We’d be lucky to get away with just a dishonorable discharge. I can’t risk that, not just because you’ve gotten it into your head that you need to —”

“Know what?” Bucky said. “I won’t let you screw this up. Not on my watch.”

To Steve’s credit, this time when Bucky pulled him down for a kiss, he managed not to whine like a dog.

Bucky’s kisses the night before had been sweet and tender, even when they got steamy enough to nearly knock Steve off his feet. This one was neither. It was harsh, with Bucky’s stubble scraping Steve’s jaw and his teeth bearing down on Steve’s mouth and his breath thick with the tobacco he’d smoked. Steve could tell that what Bucky really wanted was to kick the shit out of him, and the end result was also pretty much the same: Steve’s body aching all over and his mind nose-diving into chaos.

When Bucky pulled away, he looked — startled. Spooked, even. And why not? What had happened in the blackout now seemed like a strange dream, but this was real. And reality was damned terrifying.

Steve struggled to think. What had they been talking about?

Oh, yeah. He opened his mouth to explain that he wasn’t trying to screw up anything — the exact opposite, in fact — but Bucky beat him to it, now more frustrated than angry, like the kiss had shocked the aggression out of him.

“Does it always have to be all or nothing with you?” he said, low and urgent. “So, we can’t walk down the street holding hands. So what? Look. I know I ain’t going about this the best way, but — I don’t know what the best way is, God dammit! All I know is how to treat dames. And yeah, it ain’t like I can buy you chocolate and a bunch of flowers and tell you that you look pretty, but — don’t muck it all up before I’ve had a chance to figure it out, okay?”

Steve stared.

“I’ve got no clue what I’m doing, pal,” Bucky continued, a bit softer now. “Don’t mistake that for not wanting to. Alright?”

“Huh,” Steve said.

Could it be that Bucky was... afraid? Of what? Him putting a stop to this? But why? He wasn’t the one who —

“Well, say something.” Bucky was starting to look more than a little frustrated.

Steve realized that all he had left to say was the truth. He could only hope that it wouldn’t make him seem like a complete dolt.

“I, uh, appreciate that you want to... uh... figure it out.” The words felt just as clumsy in his mouth as they sounded. “You’re the best friend a guy could ever ask for. Really. But... don’t you see how selfish of me it would be to let you do this?”

Bucky blinked. “Do what?”

“Well, you’re used to taking care of me, right? You’ve been taking care of me for fifteen years. And I’ve been letting you. I mean, most of the time, anyway. But this — Bucky, this ain’t the same as making me soup and putting an extra blanket on me when I’m sick. Even if we don’t get caught —”

“Wait a minute.” Bucky’s expression changed in a way Steve couldn’t quite read. “This ain’t just about the chance of being found out, is it?”

Steve shook his head.

The truth was, had Bucky wanted it just as much as him — hell, had he wanted it even _half_ as much — Steve wouldn’t have given a damn about the danger. But if it was only him... what right did he have to make such a choice? Especially since it would most likely make him more even miserable, in the end?

Bucky took a deep breath.

“Okay. Let’s pretend for a moment that I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, alright? Explain it to me. In small words.”

Steve wiped at his forehead and wished himself elsewhere. Far away, preferably. Fighting off German _Jäger_ shock troops in a blizzard somewhere in the Alps with his right hand tied behind his back would’ve done.

“Okay,” he said. “What you did last night. Before the bombing raid. I know you’re real casual about sex, but — I’m not. And I don’t want to be. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is... you don’t have to do it. Not just to help me out. Or whatever it is that you think you were doing.”

There. There it was. He knew for a fact that jumping from an airplane in heavy flak had felt less terrifying.

“Steve,” Bucky said after a moment, poleaxed. “Are you trying to say that you think — that what I — that you’re under the impression I was just trying to be nice to you?”

Bucky’s angry kiss. The startled look on his face. What could they be, if not him working up the courage to do something that didn’t come to him naturally?

“How fucking rude do you think I am?” Bucky asked, now visibly offended.

“Well. You _can_ be a bit of a jerk sometimes.” _Gah._ Steve backpedaled. “I mean, you always say that I’m the one who doesn’t have an ounce of sense, but —  you don’t always exactly think things through, either.”

“Yeah. I’m starting to believe that you’re right,” Bucky huffed, pushed Steve back to the door and kissed him again.

Over the years, Steve had gotten used to the changing girls on Bucky’s arm. Some of them would never have let a fella slip more than a chaste good-night’s kiss to them after a date. Others... well, ‘charity girls’, the guys had called them. The kind who were more than willing to let Bucky put his tongue in their mouth and his hand up their skirt. Young and naïve, Steve had wondered what made them give themselves away so freely. Perhaps he’d even looked down on them a little for it. Bucky never lied to his elbow warmers, nor was he flush enough to take them to fancy restaurants every night and set them up with expensive gifts. At the end, they always seemed to walk away with nothing.

Now Steve knew his youthful superiority for the irony it had been. All Bucky had to do was kiss on him for a bit, and he was just as ready as those girls to settle for what they’d got, even if it killed him a little.

Not that Bucky was in any way restricting himself to kissing.

Once again, things progressed faster than Steve in his inexperience was able to easily cope with. In no time at all, Bucky had his shirt open and was tugging its hem from his pants. Not only did Steve not resist, he _helped_. And — God. The first time Bucky’s hands made their way up his bare skin —

Steve pushed his weight against the door, afraid that he’d choke on his own breath. Christ. Bucky was feeling him up. Like a dame. Like a fine dame, even. Like Steve’s rock face of a body was something for a red-blooded guy to desire. Steve couldn’t think. He couldn’t be brave. All he could do was try to keep from going to pieces.

“So, think I’m doing you a favor?” Bucky asked, a little breathless. “Looking out for my best pal, huh? Just a little harmless assistance between two fellas, right?”

“Ngh,” was the extent of Steve’s verbal ability, with Bucky’s hands all over him.

“Christ. Dunno which one of us is the bigger moron,” Bucky muttered, took Steve’s hand from where it hovered against the door and pulled it down to the front of his drawers.

Steve went still.

“So.” The gruff voice betrayed that Bucky was feeling less than perfectly confident. “Women always take it for granted. Never crossed my mind that you don’t. Dumb, huh?”

Steve barely dared to breathe.

It wasn’t ridiculously huge, like his. Neither was it small. It was exactly the right size. And —

“It’s a hard-on, dumbass,” Bucky said. “Not the second coming. You know, of all people, I thought _you’d_ be less impressed.”

Steve found his voice. Such as it was. “Gosh. Buck. I thought —”

“Yeah, I know what you thought.” Bucky inched even closer, trapping Steve’s hand between their erections. His voice dropped into that devastating soft-gravelly range. “What I’m asking is, have I proved you wrong?”

Steve’s mind reeled. The fabric of Bucky’s drawers left so little to imagination. But what almost floored him was the way Bucky was looking at him. Tender and turned on and a bit sheepish. Had he looked the same in the blackout, too? _God, I’ve been such an idiot._

“Christ.” And then it was just pouring out of him. “Buck. I’ve always wanted you. You don’t know what I — all those years. I thought I’d die. I almost —”

Bucky stifled his babbling with his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said, low and serious. “Okay? I’m sorry it took me ten years to pull my head out of my ass. I was a fucking coward. Steve, you gotta believe me. That’s the only reason I didn’t do this a long time ago. I know I can’t ever make it up to you.”

Steve closed his eyes. Then opened them again.

“It’s fine,” he said, muffled against Bucky’s fingers — though it wasn’t, not by a long shot. Because — this could’ve happened back home? Years ago? To not have had to go through — but his misery seemed strangely distant and meaningless now. “Buck, I don’t care, just please, please —”

This time Bucky silenced him with his mouth.

Steve wasn’t quite sure how it happened, since the kissing interfered with the proper use of his legs, but somehow they made it to his bunk and landed on it with Bucky on top. Something Steve hadn’t even known to exist took over. He pulled Bucky to him, their mouths and limbs tangling, his hand finding its way down Bucky’s drawers. And there it was. The winning ticket. His place in the sun. Bucky let out a surprised throaty sound that damn near did Steve in on the spot, and — then he was moving against Steve’s hand, and — _God. How didn’t I even —_

By the time Steve realized what was happening, nothing he could’ve done would’ve made a damn difference.

“Oh no,” he breathed out. “Oh no, oh _no_ —”

The rest was wiped out in strangled moans as he came.

After what was definitely far too much time to qualify as normal, Steve found himself lying in his too-small bunk like a beached whale, still panting and shuddering, damp with sweat, not sure he hadn’t just been hit by a _Panzer._ Bucky pushed up to his arms, dog tags hanging.

“Did you just nut from ten seconds of giving me a hand job, champ?”

Steve shifted his bum and winced at the feeling of something wet seeping down one leg of his trunks. Not a mere spoonful or two of it, either. The absurd amount of spoof he now produced was just another embarrassing way by which the serum had seen it necessary to ‘improve’ him. That first time he’d wanked off after his transformation for the sake of science (in privacy, thank God), he’d shot all over himself and had to ask for a change of clothes.

“Guhh. It just — happens. I can’t help it.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“You say that like it ain’t?” It sure as hell seemed like a bad thing to Steve, for a grown man not to be able to control himself.

“Well, it takes a lotta work to get most dames going. It’s a nice change that I can just stick it in your hand and have you shooting like it’s the Fourth of July.”

“Urgh.”

Bucky winked. “Hey. Least you’re coming first in something for a change?”

Steve took the pillow from under his head and shoved it into his friend’s laughing face.

They struggled for a while over the control of Steve’s weapon of choice. It wasn’t all that easy on the narrow cot. Suddenly Steve noticed that he was laughing, too. God, it felt good. It felt good to laugh, after all his wretched doubts. Eventually, the pillow tore and ended up on the floor in a flurry of feathers, with Bucky grinning like a loony on top of Steve, holding Steve down by his wrists. Steve could of course have freed himself whenever he wanted, but — suddenly being restrained like that seemed like the best idea ever.

“Easy, Daisy,” Bucky said, out of breath, goose down settling everywhere on him. “All I’m saying is, it’s kind of flattering.”

Steve blushed hard. His abominable tendency to ruin his shorts when Bucky had barely touched him was _flattering?_ Even now, with Bucky sitting on top of him —

The grin on Bucky’s face turned sly as he released one of Steve’s wrists to slide a hand through the coating of pillow filling over his bare chest and stomach to the front of his pants. Steve willed himself to keep from reacting, but when Bucky grabbed him through his clothes, he jerked and grunted like he was being electrocuted.

The look on Bucky’s face grew a little less cocky and a little more ‘what the heck have I gotten myself into’.

“Jeez. Half figured I was dreaming last night.”

“You’re a pig, Barnes,” Steve gasped. “A big, fat —”

“C’mon, you gotta show me,” Bucky half crooned, half laughed. “For morale. It’d be selfish of you not to —”

Steve yanked him down by the front of his undershirt and did what he could to abuse him out of the idea.

They kissed. They rolled on the narrow mattress. They almost fell off the bunk twice. Feathers got _everywhere._

“Can I —” Steve mumbled after a couple minutes, crazy and hot and melting in this impossible fever dream. “With my —”

He couldn’t believe that he was going to ask for it. But Bucky was there, kissing him and warm and inexplicably turned on, and Steve’s brain was oat mush. Also, blurred as his sense of reality was, he did realize how unlikely it was that they would be able to do this again any time soon.

“Can you what?”

“With my. Mouth..?”

Bucky grew still. Then he pulled back, far enough to look Steve in the eye. “Huh. You sure you want to?”

Oh boy, did he ever. He’d wanted it for years. Ever since he’d seen it done in a dirty eight-pager at the tender age of sixteen. It was Bucky of course who’d handed the piece of high art to him, that one time he’d dragged himself over to the Barnes’ house with a fat lip and a head full of questions, courtesy of a neighborhood thug who’d informed him that he had a ‘cocksucker’s mouth’ before planting a knuckle sandwich in said part of his anatomy.

It wasn’t Mae West like in the comic who’d sparked off years of frustrated oral fantasies in Steve, though. Or Popeye, for that matter.

Bucky picked a small feather from his mouth. “I mean, you ain’t just saying it ‘cause you gotta do everything bigger and better than anyone on your first try?”

Steve shook his head.

“Gee, I dunno, pal. You blew your load from five seconds of dry humping, I wouldn’t want to give Captain America an aneurysm.”

“Right. I changed my mind,” Steve said.

“Hey. You can suck my dick, Steve, I’m nice like that.”

“Suck your own d—”

“Just lemme do something about the door, first, okay? I don’t want anyone to butt in while we’re at it.”

By now, Steve wasn’t sure whether he was blushing harder from Bucky’s dockside language or the idea that someone might really walk in on them.

Bucky did not settle for merely bolting the door. He left the room for a while, going halfway down the stairs even — to check that the house was really deserted, most likely. On coming back, he jammed the door knob in place with a chair. There was a lock, but no one had bothered to look for the key.

The security provided by a flimsy piece of furniture seemed dubious at best. Steve had gotten up and was standing next to his bed, his courage sucked out. Had he really offered to..? What the heck had he been thinking? All he knew about what he'd proposed to do was the body parts involved.

“Wait, Buck. Maybe we should —”

But Bucky was already walking to him and pulling him back to the bunk.

Down they went again, with downy feathers flying, this time with Steve on top. The way the bed frame complained under their combined weight, it was a miracle it held itself together.

“Right,” Bucky said, wriggling under Steve as he unbuttoned his standard Army issues. “Listen, I won’t hold it against you if you — I mean, some girls try it and find that they don’t like it. It happens.”

And just like that, Steve knew he’d do it, even if it killed him or left his dignity horribly maimed.

“I won’t,” he said.

Bucky snorted. “This ain’t the sixth grade and the thing in my pants isn’t Jimmy Flanagan. You’re allowed to change your mind, Steve.”

“I _won’t,”_ Steve repeated hotly, made his way down and proved it to be true.

And, yeah, maybe he had no idea what he was doing. At the verge of realizing his spur-of-the-moment notion, he finally understood just how ambitious it had been. Stealing a guilty peek at Bucky’s prick from across the bathroom was different from looking at it from the grand distance of a couple inches, to say the least. But maybe he wasn’t doing it all wrong, either, because when he took it in his mouth, Bucky drew a sharp breath and jerked and grabbed at his hair.

“Christ, Steve,” he gritted out. “You run so hot. Holy —”

 _Is that good? Is it?_ Steve looked up, asking with his eyes since he couldn’t damn well speak.

Bucky was up on one elbow. “Look at you. Stevie. Geez.”

Steve pulled back. “Aw, Buck,” he said, blushing so hard that it was practically an out-of-body experience.

“Hey, I like to watch.”

Steve scowled at him. “I’m not gonna do it with you leering at me all the —”

“Okay, okay. Jeez.” Bucky flopped back down. “Wet blanket.”

“You gotta tell me if I’m doing it wrong.”

“Sure, pal. I’m gonna keep a scorecard. Give you marks from one to ten. Extra points for — oh, Christ..!”

What Steve had just done to stop Bucky from talking left him with the continuing problem of how to actually execute what he so badly wanted to do. The smutty comics had been graphic, but not detailed enough. Was he supposed to lick, or suck, or move his head, or —

He improvised.

If those first moments taught him anything, it was that imagining it was a whole lot different from doing it. But even if he lacked a plan, he had a goal, and by God, he was sticking to it. And incredibly enough, his fumbling did seem to turn out alright, going by how Bucky started to shift beneath him and breathe out ear-searing obscenities like ‘oh’ and ‘gosh’ and ‘Stevie’.

In the end, Steve got so caught up in his effort to do a halfway decent job (or at least not bad enough to put the idea of trying again permanently out of Bucky’s mind) that he completely failed to keep track of what it was doing to _him._ Once he noticed, all he had time for was drawing back with an obnoxious sloppy _plop_ and letting out a surprised cry of Bucky’s name — and then he was coming again, just as irrationally long and hard as the last time.

When a tenuous connection between his brain and the world restored itself, the first thing he noticed was something warm and wet running down his face. He raised his head and pawed at the jizz in dazed confusion. Then he saw more of it spattered on Bucky and realized that it wasn’t his own. Bucky had —

“You got off!” he blurted out. Not the smartest thing to say, perhaps, but at least his surprise was earnest.

Bucky gave a drowsy snort. “It happens, Einstein.”

“Oh, God.”

Steve nuzzled his way back up, pushing aside scattered, sticky down and what little clothes Bucky had on, stopping only in the middle to rub his face in Bucky's chest hair and think that the smell of Bucky’s sweat would sure have made a great cologne. “God. Oh God,” he went on and kissed Bucky on the mouth, hands in his hair, everywhere, heedless of what he’d just done, or the possibility of getting caught, or even that there was a war going on, somewhere.

“Hey, you,” Bucky mumbled, smiling at his clumsy eagerness.

“Oh God,” Steve repeated. He tilted his forehead against Bucky’s and tried to think. It felt like trying to coax wooden pegs through holes that were all shaped wrong. “We gotta. We gotta wash up. And clean —” His dick was _still_ hard. The pressure of his clothes was becoming genuinely painful. He wanted — God, he didn’t know what he wanted. Everything?

“Hey.” A hand on his jaw, Bucky pushed his face far enough to fix him with an attempt at a stern look. “Aren’t you forgetting something, buddy?”

“No..?”

“I showed you mine. Now you gotta show me yours.”

“Oh, God,” Steve groaned.

“C’mon, man, didn’t I teach you the rules when we were ten?”

The fact that it was true did not in any way explain how now, fifteen years later, Steve ended up lying on his back in his bunk, surrounded by feathers, with Bucky sitting across his thighs and opening his belt.

“I can’t believe I’m letting you do this,” he muttered, painfully aware of the blotchy redness his open shirt and fair skin did little to disguise.

“If I got a nickel every time I hear that. Hey, I haven’t poked fun at your you-know-what once, aren’t you proud of me?”

“Yeah, I was just thinking of citing you for a Silver Star at least,” Steve grumbled.

“‘Awarded for gallantry in action.’ Why, Steve, that’s positively smug of you,” Bucky said cheerfully as he picked open Steve’s buttons.

When Steve’s pants came down, he wolf-whistled. “Would ya look at that. They’ve got the Stark Industries logo and everything. Hey, is that a —”

Just to get it over with, Steve quickly unbuttoned his custom-made trunks and peeled them down to his thighs.

For a moment, the physical relief was enough to wipe away anxiety and shame. Then he felt merely naked and vulnerable, exposed to more than the air that bathed his heated skin. An arm thrown across his eyes — because he really, really did not need a repeat performance of the traumatized expression he’d witnessed on Bucky’s face in Belgium — he waited for whatever judgment Bucky’s sometimes nasty wit would dispense. _Damn, Steve, it’s big enough to feed a small family for a week,_ perhaps, or, _hot diggety, you could kill small women with this._

“Gosh. It’s so pink,” Bucky said.

Steve lifted the arm from his face and frowned. Gingerly, he looked down to Bucky who was smiling at his nethers with a kind of awestruck fondness.

“Pink?” Steve couldn’t help but repeat.

“Like a baby’s bottom.”

Now — now that was just plain hooey. His beastly member wasn’t pink. And it definitely did not in any way resemble a baby’s buttocks. It was a malformed, terrifying, veiny —

“It’s gorgeous,” Bucky said. “You lucky son of a bitch.”

Steve muttered in indignation.

“There’s a problem, though,” Bucky continued. “It looks great, but, uh. I’m not sure I can pay you in kind for what you just did. It’s so damned thick.”

Bucky? Paying in kind? Putting his mouth on Steve’s horrible — Steve closed his eyes and thought of the nastiest thing that readily came to mind. Going by the vigorous twitching and leaking taking place down south, it wasn’t a great success.

“Get a load of that.” Bucky wrapped his hand around it, if only barely. “It’s like the Mona Lisa of cocks. Or maybe the Sistine Chapel. I hear Mona Lisa’s kind of small.”

No, thinking of smelly socks wasn’t nearly enough. Steve wasn’t sure even a light artillery barrage in the head would’ve done it. The way Bucky was looking at him, the nonsense he was spouting — it was doing things to him. Things that would end up with him humiliating himself messily all over again in the not so distant future.

“Never figured I’d say this, but — I ain’t sure what to do, here,” Bucky said as if to himself.

“You don’t gotta do nothing, Buck,” Steve got out. It wasn’t a lie, even. He had a feeling that no matter what, he was going to go off again soon. Several times, if allowed. At least this time he no longer had his pants on.

“Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s the way this works. Listen, I need you to tell me if I do something you don’t like. I don’t want you to be noble about it.”

The idea that Bucky could easily do something that didn’t turn him into a happily gibbering fool was hilarious. “And — and if I — like it..?”

Bucky laughed. “Tell me that too,” he said, and leaned back down.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the very last bit of this fic before CA:CW came to theaters. I know it’s a bit AU now, I hope no one minds.

By the time Bucky got off the phone with Agent Carter and ambled back to the kitchen, pre-dusk gloom was setting in, but the other Commandos still hadn’t returned. Even with Count Basie Orchestra playing low on the shortwave radio, the house felt eerily quiet.

Steve was pouring himself another cup of coffee from the percolator.

“So?” he asked, trying hard to sound casual.

Boots scuffed across the linoleum floor behind him. Then the soft smell of pipe tobacco reached his nose right before Bucky’s shoulder brushed against his own.

“They just wanted to hear my side of the story,” Bucky said.

A debrief. What had he been so afraid of? That ‘feminine intuition’ Peggy had mentioned? That she’d read what had happened right out of Bucky’s mind, even over a phone call?

When a hand reached up to ruffle Steve’s hair, he objected automatically, like he would have when he was still little.

“Don’t worry,” Bucky said. “I wouldn’t tattle on you to your girl.”

“You got nothing to tattle on me about,” Steve muttered, blushing at the hand that slid down to linger at the spot between his neck and shoulder, over his olive-drab shirt. _Least, nothing that wouldn’t implicate us both._

“Sure I do. I could tell her about your enormous —”

“Hey!”

“— weakness for the Lone Ranger. What? What’d you think I was gonna say? You’ve got a problem, buddy. Not everything in the world revolves around your wang, no matter how big it is.”

Steve half groaned, half laughed.

God, how he wanted to duck his head and kiss the stupid grin off Bucky’s mouth. But he was already well aware how it would end, and... the others might be back any moment. He turned back to scoop sugar and powdered cream into his beverage.

“It scares me that I can almost imagine you doing it.”

Bucky sighed. “Such lack of trust. You could break a fella’s heart.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t got it in you. You got no shame. You tattled on me to my ma all the time.” Steve knew he sounded about twelve, but it was the best he could do with the way Bucky’s hand was kneading at his shoulder.

“Yeah, about how you gave your lunch to one of the Baker boys again. Tell you what. The moment you start skipping school to help old Liebowitz take his wife to the hospital, I’m gonna run straight to Carter and tell on you, alright?” Bucky looked down. “Hey pal, I think you’re putting way too much sugar in your joe,” he said, and then he stole Steve’s half-eaten ration bar and slunk away, snickering.

After a sputter or two, Steve turned back to his (admittedly by now over-tended) coffee.

Perhaps he did deserve to be teased, a little. It wasn’t like he’d had the slightest idea what had been going on for days. Hell, apparently he wasn’t even able to _count,_ any longer.

“So, what is your side of the story?” he asked when he was making his way to the kitchen table.

Bucky had already settled at it, with his back to the wall, puffing on his pipe and leafing through an issue of _The Stars and Stripes_ someone had left behind.

“I helped,” he said. “I’m not a medic or a human crane like some, but I did what I could.”

Steve pulled himself a chair. “Could’ve waited ‘til the bombs stopped falling.”

“I promised to follow you into the jaws of death, not to a goddamned shelter.”

There was no heat to the argument left. It was too difficult to get angry with Steve’s brain still trying to reform from primordial goop after coming no less than six times in an hour.

“Fine,” he said. “What then?”

Bucky kept his eyes on his paper. “I walked back here. The busses weren’t running and I couldn’t catch a ride. Speaking of Carter, I heard she picked you up before I arrived. More posturing at Eisenhower Platz for the sake of the nation?”

“Yeah.” Steve tasted his coffee and tried not to let on that his teeth almost fell out. “Had to do a reception and a press conference. I was pretty whacked, so don’t be surprised if The Times runs a story about me saving London naked and on fire. I don’t know how I would’ve managed without Peggy.”

He glanced across the table, chastened. Thinking of Carter so much with Bucky sitting right there... it had to be wrong, somehow, after what had happened.

“So it’s Peggy now?” Bucky said, eyes on his paper. “You know, you always called her Agent Carter before.”

Huh. He had, hadn’t he? Steve had no idea what to say.

They sat in silence for a moment, Bucky smoking his pipe, Steve drinking his over-sugared coffee and looking out the window at the backyard that had been given over to a neighbor who had turned it into a victory garden. This early in the spring, the plot was still just a row of black dirt beds that turned even darker as the night approached.

Finally, Bucky pushed the newspaper away. It was getting too dark to read, anyhow. Soon they’d have to close the curtains and turn on the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.

“Do you ever think about what will happen after the war?” Bucky asked.

Every man and woman in the service had plans for life after V day. Big or small, those dreams helped them survive the intense boredom interspersed with moments of sheer horror. But Bucky had rarely touched on the subject, and then only to crack jokes about it, like how Steve would have to go back to juggling motorcycles for a living and such. Surely he didn’t expect Steve to wax serious about it now?

“How ‘bout a farm?” Steve said. “Somewhere warm. Like Africa. We could grow coffee and ride around the ranch all day like cowboys.”

“Fancy yourself a Danish baroness?”

Steve shrugged. “I might write a book.”

“Would it have a happy ending?”

“How ‘bout six happy endings?” Steve’s face warmed up again.

“I could do with just one, like a normal person,” Bucky grumbled. “But Steve, listen. You should marry Carter —”

Steve stilled, mug halfway to his mouth.

Bucky kept talking. “Hell. Have you seen her? She’s a hot tamale and worships the ground you walk on. If you pop the question to her now, she won’t have time to come to her senses. You _will_ marry her,” Bucky said, a dogged look in his eye even as Steve’s expression darkened. “You’ll marry her and give her half a dozen snotty brats, ‘cause that’s your six kinds of happy ending —”

“Really, Buck?”

“— just have to make sure the Nazis don’t win, first.”

“Do I get a say in this?”

“Nope.”

Steve lowered his coffee mug and tried hard not to explode.

“I just felt guilty even thinking about her, you schmuck! How do you see me getting hitched working out?”

“You’ll get over it.”

Steve had to take a moment.

“And you?” he asked when he was almost certain that he wouldn’t end up saying something he’d regret.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. What are _you_ gonna do when this is all over?”

He could tell that Bucky hadn’t spared a single thought to his own future. _Thinks he won’t make it,_ he realized with a painful pang of lucidity. And just like that, his heated feelings cooled right off.

_Of course he wants me to marry Peggy. He doesn’t want me to end up alone._

A memory came to him, of huddling around a sputtering fire in the Italian Alps, cold and hungry after the liberation of Schmidt’s labor camp. Scared by Bucky’s ragged appearance and the look in his eyes, hollow except when they landed on him and something awed and almost panicked lit up in them, Steve had tried to pull him back by talking about home — about Erskine’s experiment, about the U.S.O. tour, about going back after the war. Bucky had listened like he’d been starved for the sound of Steve’s voice more than anything he said.

 _Home?_ he’d said when Steve finally ran out of words. _You sure it’s still where you left it?_

“I’ll be the awkward old war buddy,” Bucky decided in the present, like it was the nicest white lie he was able to come up with. “We’ll fix old engines and chug beer in your backyard every Sunday until Peggy kicks me out. I’ll offer to give your kids piggyback rides and they’ll run away screaming ‘cause I’m still wearing my tattered old army duds and no longer have the decency left to shave.”

Steve shook his head. “I prefer Africa.”

“You’d be bored out of your mind in two days. Do they even got baseball down there?” Bucky folded his arms and put the long-neglected pipe back in his mouth. When that failed to produce the expected outcome, he gave it a disapproving frown and started digging in his pocket for a matchbook.

On the radio, G.I. Jill of AFRS fame was twittering away between songs. _“The dedication on that one goes to Private John W. Davis and the APO 520! Which brings us to Dinah Shore and an item much requested by you fellas —”_

Steve turned the coffee mug in his hands. He had no idea how to put what he wanted to say in words. Then he just said it.

“I don’t want to marry anyone. I want to be with you.”

Bucky struck a match against his thumbnail and took his time rekindling his pipe. Then he smoked for a full half minute in silence, with the radio droning on in the background and Steve burning with an urge to reach over the table and shake him until words fell out.

“Yeah, well,” Bucky said at last. “That would lead to people finding out, you know. I recall that’s something you’re afraid of.”

“I am.” Steve groped for the right words. “But... some day. When I’m no longer needed.”

“And when’s that gonna happen? You think they’ll just let you stop being Captain America when the war ends?”

Steve’s gut clenched. _They won’t. Will they?_

“I don’t care what people think,” he said out loud.

“You will, when shit starts flying.”

 _Watch me._ Steve glowered across the table. These days, it was prone to make people squirm in under five seconds. But Bucky just took it, like he’d always done when he thought he was right about something.

He wasn’t. Not... entirely. Sure, Steve hated the idea of leading a life together in secret, and what people would say if they ever got a whiff of how things really stood. But if Bucky wanted him, too... if they had even a small chance of building something _real_... he had to give it a try.

Bucky’s mouth pulled into a rueful smile. He shook his head.

“That goddamn face,” he said.

Steve’s brow furrowed harder. “What’s wrong with my face?”

“You’d do it, wouldn’t you?” Bucky huffed out a resigned laugh. “Take on the whole world for a chance to throw it all away for my sorry ass. To think I didn’t always know what that damn way you look at me meant.”

Suddenly, Steve was afraid to breathe. Bucky kept smiling to himself, eyes lowered.

“Like I’m the goddamn moon in the sky or something. And screw anyone who doesn’t think so. Scared the hell outta me when I first started to see it for what it was, back in... well. Figured I’d have to start keeping away from you, not to give you ideas.” He chuckled. “But I couldn’t. Just fucking couldn’t. And now there’s a thought to keep a guy awake for a night or ten. That maybe I wouldn’t have minded it so much if we —”

Now, Steve wouldn’t have been able to breath if he’d wanted to.

“I told myself I was just confused,” Bucky continued. “I was, what. Twenty? Guys that age... could dip their wick in almost anything, right?”

“I’ve got no idea,” Steve said. God’s own truth, too. For him, lust had always been far more complicated than that. “And gee. Thanks.”

“I didn’t mean — Christ!” Bucky winced. “I should’ve been so lucky. You were the prettiest thing on the block.”

A much younger Steve would’ve punched the living daylights out of anyone for saying as much. Now... he wasn’t sure how he felt.

“Couldn’t for the life of me figure out the right thing to do,” Bucky went on. “Told myself I’d just ruin it, either way. And then one day you weren’t giving me those looks anymore. You’d gotten over me, and I still liked women, so... it had worked out, right? But somehow it was a lot harder to move on than I’d expected.”

Steve didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t say it was fine, because it wasn’t — but he didn’t have the right to start flinging accusations, either, because the truth was that he’d been a coward, too. Too afraid to act on his feelings. Had the war never happened...

Bucky put the pipe back in his mouth. Smoke billowed. Then he glanced at Steve again, the look on his face now simmering with crooked humor. “Felt real sorry for myself, for a time.”

“Then why’d you get so mad at me after Czechoslovakia?”

“Well, all those years, making me think you’d gotten over me... I dunno, it doesn’t make a lotta sense now. After I got my shit together, I figured I’d let you know that I wasn’t about to blow out of town or something. I swear I didn’t plan for things to go like this. Suddenly I just really wanted to kiss you, and —” Bucky looked away, as if to hide whatever it was that turned his voice a little husky. “When I did, I realized I’d been even more of an idiot than I’d thought.”

After discarding about five different things to say, Steve got up and went to the sink, to add his empty mug to the pile of dirty dishes collecting there.

From the window above the sink, he could see blackout curtains being closed in the houses behind the darkening yard. On a small table next to him, the half-muted radio was still rasping out AFRS programming. The last beats of a jive song gave way to the ever cheerful female record spinner. _“Well punch my buttons and call me jukebox, that’s what I call solid!”_

Behind him, Bucky stood up as well and walked over. Steve’s heart started beating faster, but Bucky just reached past him to turn down the radio, so only the ticking of the wall clock broke the silence.

“Are you mad at me?” Bucky asked.

“Can’t afford the luxury,” Steve said. “I’d put you in a hospital.”

“So? You want to clock me one, go ahead.” It almost sounded like Bucky was hoping to get punched. Sometimes Steve suspected that he’d developed something of a taste for it during his time in the YMCA boxing ring.

The truth was, Steve wanted to get mad, even if it didn’t involve swinging his fists. He wanted to let his temper get the better of him, like he hadn’t since his transformation. But he knew he wouldn’t. If it all ended two days, two weeks, two months from now —

And how damned unfair was it that he couldn’t even afford to be angry?

“I’m not mad,” he lied. “It’s just a lot to take in.”

If he’d kissed Bucky once. Just once. Would things have turned out different?

 _Oh, Steve. No use crying over spilt milk,_ said his ma’s voice in his head.

When Bucky put a hand on his arm to turn him around, he obliged. Bucky chuckled at the sight of his folded arms and crumpled forehead. The pipe was gone, left on the table behind him.

“Right, not mad at all,” Bucky said. “C’mon, baby-doll, you know you can’t stay sore at me.”

“Baby-doll? Seriously? That’s where this is going?” But Steve couldn’t help the smile that stole its way on his face.

Bucky inched closer. “Light of my life, my one and only.”

“Dumbass.” Soft soap or not, Steve was starting to blush.

Bucky grinned.  “Handsome and stupid as all hell. Just the way you like ‘em, huh?”

It was grade A baloney, of course. Bucky had always been at the top of his class, even better than Steve who actually liked to study. Later, his AGCT and MA scores had been through the roof. Steve could only guess at why he liked to play dumb so often, with his Jimmy Cagney accent and two-bit gangster act. He was easily the most talented person Steve knew and could’ve done anything he wanted.

“You’re all red again,” Bucky said. “Did you think of something nice?”

Steve tried hard to keep scowling. “Yeah, that I can now throw you across the room if I want to, midget.”

“Aw, don’t be so hard on me. You know I love you, don’t you, sugar muffin?”

“Hey, now,” Steve sputtered. Not like he was capable of a lot more, since Bucky was inching up against him and lifting hands to his waist, the look on his face changing in a way Steve could still barely wrap his mind around.

“The window’s open,” Steve managed.

“So? Long as we don’t turn on the light, no one can see,” Bucky said and reached up to kiss him.

It _was_ starting to get darker, with shadows spreading from the corners of the room.

After what had happened, it seemed ridiculous to Steve that his hands would still shake when he put them around Bucky. But they did. The possibility of things having come to this seemed so tiny, part of his mind still insisted that it would also take the smallest of mistakes for him to destroy everything.

“You smell better than any dog face should,” Bucky mused, later. “Always did. I guess that oughta have told me something, if I wasn’t such a damn fool.” He put his stubbled face against Steve’s neck and sniffed at it loudly, hands sliding down to Steve’s ass. “Mmh. Aw yeah. God bless America.”

Steve laughed. “Is that how you talk to girls, too? I’m starting to feel sorry for ‘em.”

“Nah, I’ve been saving all this bullshit for you, sugar-britches.”

“Sugar-britches? It kinda starts to sound like you think I’m a dame..!”

Bucky pulled back to look at him, one brow raised. “Well, if you’ve got a yen for putting on a wiggle dress and shaking it for me like Gipsy Rogers —”

Steve had to put in his best effort not to crack up completely. “Get off of me.”

“I happen to know you don’t mean that, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, says who?”

“Says this.” Bucky put one hand between the two of them and gave Steve’s very erect prick a firm squeeze.

_Whoa._

He couldn’t let this happen again. Not when there was a chance that the rest of the Commandos would return any moment.

Gathering what little of his willpower remained, Steve stepped away and turned his back. No way was he ever going to be able to stop things from going too far with Bucky looking at him like that.

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Crazy for you, maybe,” Bucky crooned and pushed against him from the back. “Can you tell?”

Steve’s jaw went slack at the feel of a stiffening cock against his ass.

 _Oh God._ He yanked the blackout curtain in place and reached out to put his weight against the window frame instead of the all too rickety looking kitchen sink. Part of him was blaring like a siren, seeing what was happening for the madness it was. The rest —

“I can’t stop thinking about it. What you did for me in the bathroom.” Bucky mouthed the top of Steve’s back through his shirt. “Damn. I thought I was dreaming. If you were a dame, I’d have to put a ring on you for it.” His right hand curled around Steve again. The stubborn erection in Steve’s trunks stretched out the last remaining inch.

When Bucky’s fingers started to squeeze and relax around it, the last bit of sense leaked out of Steve’s brain.

“Would you let me?” Bucky asked in a husky voice. “Do you like a girl?”

_What..?_

“I would, you know. Give it to you like that. If you wanted.”

_He can’t mean —_

Steve whined. The window frame creaked in his hands.

“Buck —”

“Christ.” Bucky started moving, like he was about to rub one off against Steve’s ass. “I can’t even imagine putting it in you. How it would feel. You’re so hot, I bet it’d be like fucking a goddamn furnace —”

“Agh..!” With a hard shove, Steve pushed them both away from the sink and fumbled at his belt, desperate to get his fly open before he ruined his second last pair of clean pants.

Bucky swatted his paws away and did it for him.

And there it was again. Zero to sixty in goddamn seconds like one of Stark’s supercars. It was crazy, and insanely dangerous, and absolutely, incredibly wonderful.

But mostly just insane.

“Geez..!” Steve moaned when he was done, swaying above the sink in a daze like a couple of Schmidt’s finest had just gone at his head with mallets. Behind him, Bucky shook with silent laughter, hand still moving slowly over him.

“Hey, that took at least fifteen seconds, pal. I’m proud of ya.”

Steve didn’t even have it left in him to tell Bucky to go jump in the nearest lake.

“Listen.” Bucky shifted against him, voice still rough around the edges. “Can I —?”

 _No!_ wailed the tiny bit of reason Steve still possessed. “Yeah,” went his mouth, and almost added an embarrassing _please_ at the end.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen, but it wasn’t how his pants and trunks were pushed around his thighs and the hem of his shirt tucked up. He barely had time to get embarrassed before Bucky had his own belt and buttons open. And then all Steve could think of was skin against skin.

“Christ. You’re like a damn Greek statue,” Bucky groaned into the back of his neck, arm around him, full body contact with his boots scraping the sides of Steve’s shoes and his chest to Steve’s back. He wasn’t heavy enough to sway Steve on account of his weight alone, but somehow Steve still found himself rocking against the sink, making the pile of dishes in it rattle.

Greek statue? No way was that a good thing to say, not from a guy who was used to partners a lot softer than marble. Steve started to stammer out an apology, but then Bucky was moving against him, and every word Steve had ever known left his head. Hands tight on the window frame, he groaned and braced himself for another trip to Oz.

Sure enough, after a couple minutes, he was struggling his way to resembling something human again, six turned to eight or maybe some non-Euclidian number since that would’ve made just as much sense.

“Holy Christ,” Bucky drawled out, breathing raggedly against his back. “Shoulda done this years ago, Stevie. Sweetheart. I would’ve been so good to ya —”

And, yeah. Maybe for the first time since this whole thing had started, it was Steve’s turn to be the saner one.

“Buck. We gotta —”

Bucky sighed. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled and, pulling himself back together, pushed away.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Steve complained later, as he was getting up from where he’d been wiping at a truly mortifying amount of spunk spattered all over the sink, visible to him in the falling dusk only on account of his enhanced sight. He stared at his destroyed handkerchief in dismay.

Bucky seemed... amused.

“Why are you laughing?” Steve asked. “Is it funny that we might get caught?”

“No.” The familiar grin broke out as Bucky picked the stained piece of cloth from Steve’s hand and stuffed it in his pocket. “But we weren’t. Stop worrying so much.”

A bit thick, that, coming from a man who could barely even cross a street without checking the parameter for snipers. “The guys —”

“Went to a bar, probably. They’ve got girls to say goodbye to. Morita’s gotta take his for a walk. C’mon.” Bucky pushed against him with a comically amorous expression on his face. “One last kiss. You wouldn’t send your best guy to the trenches without a kiss, would ya?”

“You’re awful,” Steve said, laughing despite himself as Bucky pushed him back. “What the heck’s gotten into you?”

“You,” Bucky said. “You’ve gotten into me.”

And, yeah. If _that_ was how Bucky talked to dames... Steve could kind of see how it worked.

“For the record,” Bucky said, eventually. “I was just kidding about the... girl thing. In case you couldn’t tell.”

Steve took in his friend’s face in the failing light. “I dunno. You seemed pretty jazzed about it.”

“So? I don’t want to hurt you.”

Steve didn’t care if it hurt.

“You can do it,” he said.

“Say what?”

“You can do anything you want.”

Had there ever been any doubt? On some level, he’d probably known it from the moment Bucky first walked into his life, ten years old and already a shameless charmer with that newsboy cap tilted on his hair and a smile that could put the sun itself to shame. Steve had been his when they were just two dirty rascals playing kickball with a tin can beneath the stoop. And when his ma passed away, and in Camp Lehigh, and in the Vita-Ray pod... in the trains and hotels on his U.S.O. tour, missing Bucky every second so hard that it was sometimes difficult to breathe. Bucky could do what he wanted with him. Keep him or throw him away. Although he did have high hopes for the former.

“Fuck,” Bucky said emphatically, kissed Steve hard on the mouth and started pulling him toward the door.

They were halfway up the stairs when the front door banged open.

There was no time to make an escape. All they could do was push away from one another on the steps, right as the lamp in the vestibule was turned on and the inner door thrown wide to allow men and light into the house. In seconds, life flooded the old, dark hallway.

The Commandos sketched salutes to the two officers standing in the shadowed staircase. After shedding coats and caps, they headed to the kitchen, couple of them with towel-covered baskets on their arm.

Dum Dum lingered behind.

“You two ladies caught up on your beauty sleep?”

They shared a glance. Color was returning to Bucky’s face. Steve no longer felt like he might faint any moment, either.

Dum Dum scratched his temple under his bowler hat.

“Have you been fighting again..?”

It was as good an excuse as any.

“Have we, Buck?” Steve asked.

Bucky rubbed at the back of his neck and feigned sullenness. “Nah.”

“There you go,” Steve said and turned back. “We ain’t fighting. Did Morita find his girl?”

Dum Dum cracked a grin. “Hell yeah. She was practically eating out of his hand.”

“Sounds like a match made in heaven.” _Or a kennel._

“Yeah. Hey, we got chow. Haul yourselves to the mess and there might even be some left by the time you arrive.”

The American Red Cross Club in London was famous for its food. The Commandos had probably only had to hint that their missing officers had toiled the night away with the ARP, to send the staff into a fuss over the picnic baskets Steve had seen. He already knew to expect a message or two tucked between the turkey sandwiches and cream cakes — addressed to Bucky, mostly, since the dope couldn’t help flirting with anything that wore a skirt.

Steve’s stomach growled loudly at the thought of food. One lunch and one and a half emergency ration bars (developed for the S.S.R. by Stark Food Products & Provisions Co.) weren’t nearly enough to last his metabolism for a whole day.

“Sure, in a minute,” he said. “Just gotta wrap up our... talk.”

“Don’t take too long. Food adrift is a gift. Hey, is that coffee I smell?” Dum Dum made for the kitchen, from where light and sound and evening news from the radio now flowed.

As soon as he was gone, with two doors left ajar in between, Steve leaned back against the wall, faint with relief. Bucky put a hand on the stair rail and bent over like he was feeling light-headed.

Hell. Longing glances were one thing. Five or ten minutes more, and someone might’ve walked in on them with their dicks up in each other’s —

“Too close.”

“Yeah.” Bucky straightened, his confidence replaced by something Steve didn’t like one tenth as much. “I’m sorry. I was out of line.”

“No,” Steve said, sharp, but still low enough not to carry beyond the doors. “I was just as far across that line as you, you hear?”

Bucky let his eyes be held by Steve’s for a moment. Then he nodded. But Steve could tell that he was still blaming himself. The by now familiar self-loathing was starting to ooze from him like a sickness, as if whatever peace they’d managed to share was fading to the back seat with his restless paranoia taking the wheel again.

The way they were staggered on the stairs, with Steve on the lower step, they stood for once at the same height. After a glance to make sure there was no direct line of view to the kitchen, Steve gathered his courage, grabbed the front of Bucky’s shirt and pulled him close by it, to press their mouths together.

_Home. You think it’s still where you left it?_

What if he could be Bucky’s home? The place where Bucky didn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder or thinking of the pain Zola had inflicted on him, or the people whose blood he had on his hands? If that was all Steve could ever give him — peace, if only for a moment — it would be enough.

Well, almost enough, anyway. Steve wasn’t a saint, no matter what people wanted to believe.

“Hey,” he murmured. “We’re gonna figure this out, alright?”

_God, please give me time to figure it out._

Bucky huffed out a half-laugh, a little less shaken, now. “Yeah. Maybe when we’re ninety and too damn ugly for anyone to care what the heck we get up to anymore.” His eyes took in Steve’s face in the artificial light, as if marveling at it. “Though I guess, with the serum, you’re gonna be just as perfect at ninety as you are today.”

“Dunno, Buck,” Steve chuckled. “Perfect is a big word.”

Bucky’s mouth twitched. “Sure is, buddy. It’s a fucking _huge_ word.”

Steve snorted.

“C’mon, Sergeant Smartass. I’m starving.”

“Yessir, Captain Dumbass, sir.” Bucky slung an arm across Steve’s shoulders. They started down the stairs. “Hell, you’re always starving. If this miserable war ever ends, you’re gonna end up so fat, I’m gonna have to cart you around in a wheelbarrow.”

“Probably. But will you still love me?”

Bucky sighed. “I guess I will.”

“Fat _and_ happy. You know, that sounds almost as good to me as Africa.”

Bucky laughed. And with that, grinning at each other like a pair of saps, they went into the kitchen.

o o o

_epilog_

o o o

The metal hand clenched and unclenched slowly, clicking and whirring at the edge of Steve’s hearing.

“Your mom’s name was Sarah,” the ghost said. “You used to wear newspapers in your shoes.”

There were three men in the room. But the ghost only had eyes for Steve, hungry and almost unblinking under the curtain of his dark hair.

“You were small,” he said. “And sick all the time.”

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve got out.

The ghost’s eyes narrowed at the name. Metal fingers curled into a fist, enough power in it to break even Steve’s bones. Sam was starting to slide a hand toward the stun gun in his pocket. When Steve shook his head, he held back, but not without a silent protest with his eyes.

_Careful, Cap._

The fading ache in Steve’s recently cracked ribs was chanting to the same tune. But... they’d lock Bucky up and throw away the key. Or worse. The thought filled Steve with cold nausea.

_C’mon, Buck. You always were ten times smarter than you let on. Keeping things to yourself. There’s gotta be something HYDRA couldn’t touch._

Echoes of emotion came and went in the ghost’s eyes. Doubt? Rage? Then something sly appeared in their hard steel-blue glint. When they fixed on Steve again, Steve’s heart almost stopped.

That look. It was _him_. Breath catching, Steve leaned forward, offering — what? Himself? The good and the bad and the ugly, and everything in between?

_See me, Buck. Please see me._

The ghost spoke again, as matter-of-fact and detached as before.

“We had sex during the war. You had a very large penis.”

Sam choked on something that wasn’t supposed to go into a human windpipe and started coughing.

Steve laughed through his tears. “Yeah, Buck. We did. And I still do.”

The ghost frowned. “We were... lovers?”

“Yeah.” And stupid and reckless as it was, Steve couldn’t help saying exactly what he was thinking. “Come home to me, baby. I miss you so much.”

For a moment he was certain that he’d made a terrible mistake. No way would the man Bucky had once known have ever said something so outrageous with others present. Even Sam looked like he needed to sit down a little.

But the ghost simply seemed to process this new bit of information.

“I’ve dreamed about you,” Bucky said, eyes seeking Steve’s in confusion now, not in challenge. Inside Steve, something that had died a long time ago came back to life and reached out to grow into the sun.

“I’ve dreamed about you, too, Buck,” he said.

And just like that, seventy years of ice in him cracked and started to thaw.

~FIN~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there it was, finally, my little crack story about Steve Rogers having a slightly larger than average dick.
> 
> I’m definitely not an expert on the 40’s or the Second World War. I know just about enough to be able to tell that aside from everything that I chose to just ignore or bend, there are probably a ton of mistakes.
> 
> I have a [tumblr](https://phoenike.tumblr.com). Not a very active one... I read more than I reblog or write. But it's there, and I'm friendly :-)


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